In 1991, as an aide and advisor to former Prime Minister Narasimha Rao, Jairam Ramesh was witness to a defining moment in India’s economic history: the financial crisis of 1991. Between June and August that year, India nearly became an international defaulter and a bankrupt state. Ramesh’s proximity to the then Finance Minister Manmohan Singh and other officials in the prime minister’s office gave him an interesting role to play during the crucial three-month period. Years later, he served as the minister of state for environment and forests from 2009 to 2011 and as the union minister for rural development from 2011 to 2014, when the United Progressive Alliance government was in power. In his recently published book, To The Brink and Back: India’s 1991 Story, Ramesh, who is now a senior leader of the Indian National Congress and a member of parliament in the Rajya Sabha, provides his account of the tumultuous time. Nikhil Pandhi, an intern at The Caravan, met the politician and spoke to him about the persona of Narasimha Rao, the Congress’ ambivalent relationship with Rao, and what Narendra Modi and Arun Jaitley ought to learn from the Rao-Singh duo.
Nikhil Pandhi: In your book you say that Manmohan Singh as finance minister in 1991 was “an idea whose time had to come.” Would you say the same for then Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao?
Jairam Ramesh: Well, Narasimha Rao is a little more tricky because one month before he became prime minister, Rao was told by Rajiv Gandhi that he’s not going to get a ticket either for the Rajya Sabha or for the Lok Sabha. So Rao was packing his bags to go back to Hyderabad. Whereas in the case of Manmohan Singh, Narasimha Rao wanted him, [R] Venkataraman [then President of India] wanted him, Rajiv Gandhi had him on his radar—that’s why I said his was an idea whose time had come. It was not so with Rao.
NP: The Rao of your book cuts a curious figure. What gave his political rivals reason to be wary of him?
JR: He was poker-faced, constantly playing chess—not with only you but also with himself. He could hear you out for one hour without saying anything, giving you no idea of what his responses would be. He was cunning (not in a Machiavellian sense), astute and crafty. After all, Mr Modi takes credit for [brokering a peace accord with Thuingaleng] Muivah [the revolutionary leader from Nagaland] but the first contact with Muivah was made by Mr Narasimha Rao in Paris in 1995. The first contact with the militants in Jammu and Kashmir was made by Rajesh Pilot [the minister of state for the ministry of communications in the Rao government] at the instance of Rao, the then prime minister. Beant Singh was a successful chief minister of Punjab along with his DGP [director general of police], KPS Gill, because of the political backing that Rao gave him.
I have used a phrase in my book that he [Rao] was a much misunderstood man and he did much to make himself misunderstood. He never made an attempt to explain himself. Except in the period of this book—in the first three months of his tenure—where, contrary to the perception of his being indecisive, I thought he was exceedingly decisive, exceedingly communicative and extraordinary in terms of reaching out. This period of three months, it really was a different Narasimha Rao I saw.
NP: Rao’s speeches, which you occasionally drafted, often invoke his predecessor Rajiv Gandhi. What kind of relationship did the two have?
JR: I drafted a number of speeches but he used only one—that of 9 July 1991. He was, of course, an elder statesman of sorts to Rajiv Gandhi and he was the chairman of the manifesto committee in 1991. He also approved Rajiv Gandhi's speech on [the public broadcasting channel] DD [Doordarshan]. Mr Gandhi was to give an address on Doordarshan before April 1991 and I had prepared a draft. Mr Gandhi sent the draft to Mr NarasimhaRao who, in his red-ink pilot pen marked the corrections and sent it back—no doubt that Rao was used as a sounding board.
But if you read the Mainstream article [The Great Suicide, January 1990, authored by a “Congressman,” rumoured to have been Narasimha Rao], it’s an indictment of Rajiv Gandhi. Not of Rajiv Gandhi, the individual, but of his style of management. Remember that Narasimha Rao could be quite cussed.
He opposed Rajiv Gandhi’s trip to China in 1988 and he was [sic] home minister of India when the anti-Sikh Riots took place, a fact very few people recall but somehow what he did or didn’t do in that most tragic period has escaped scrutiny. I know for a fact that in his diary Mr Narasimha Rao expresses great resentment on 24 April 1991 at being denied a ticket, exactly 27 days before he became PM. He has an entry in his diary where he says that, “This is the first break in my 34-year legislative career and I am bitterly disappointed.”
NP: How did your stint as a prime ministerial aide during the 1991 crisis shape your political career thereafter?
JR: It led to a lot of trauma. On 2 September [1991], as I describe it, without any advance warning and intimation, I was sent-off to the Planning Commission. It took me a long time to get over the sudden move. A lot of people in the Congress party who were close to me because of the position I occupied [in the PMO], suddenly stopped taking my phone calls (laughs)—I forget the names now! So it took me a while—almost about two and a half years—to get over this struggle.
Was there any defining lesson? Not really. I took it in my stride. One thing is certainly true: the manner in which Rao handled the politics of the economic reforms was quite remarkable. He listened to everybody, and then did precisely what he wanted. I remember a famous phrase he once told me that “You have to know how to do a U-turn without making it seem like a U-turn.” I wish Mr Modi would do that—be democratic, allow different points of view, allow dissent and criticism and then do whatever you want. That’s what the democratic process is all about. Both Mr Modi and Mr Jaitley can learn much from this unlikely duo [Rao-Singh] of how they handled very contentious issues.
NP: It is widely believed that Narasimha Rao has not been given his due by the Congress, in particular by leaders such as Sonia Gandhi.
JR: The ambivalence towards Narasimha Rao in the Congress party comes from the Ayodhya issue. From what I could see, most Congressmen believed that Mr Rao did not do enough to prevent the demolition of the Babri Masjid. There were also those Congressmen who believed that Mr Rao wanted the Babri Masjid to fall anyway. I’m not in a position to judge because I was not there [Ramesh had moved to the Planning Commission]. All I can say is that maybe Narasimha Rao overestimated his reach with the RSS [Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh]. He overestimated his clout and underestimated the capacity of mischief within the BJP [Bharatiya Janata Party] and the Sangh Parivar, who had perhaps always had a plan to get the masjid down.
Then, there was the Jain hawala issue, in which many Congressmen believed Narasimha Rao settled scores against leaders in his own party. Then, there was this issue of the JMM [Jharkhand Mukti Morcha] no-confidence motion [against Rao] in 1993. In 1994, the Congress suffered ignominious defeats in Andhra [Pradesh] and Karnataka. And then our loss in [the general elections of] 1996. Had we won in 1996, Mr Rao would have not been a pariah.
As far as Mrs Gandhi is concerned, I have no reason to believe that she showed him any disrespect. My only experience of the relationship the two had was in March 2001 when the Congress party held its plenary in Bangalore. Mrs Gandhi went out of her way to be respectful to Mr Rao, invited him on stage and consulted him.
If there is one political message, I think the Congress must stop being apologetic and defensive about the 1991 economic reforms. It must stand up and own up to the political reforms and get counted as the party that got these reforms.
NP: Is this book timely or also politically “well timed”?
JR: (Laughs) Well, we’re going to have 25 years of the economic reforms very soon and I am sure there will be a spate of books that will come out along with interviews and the like. After [the general elections of] 2014, I had a lot of time on my hands. Parkinson’s Law—work expands to fill the time available—operated as far as I was concerned. For the first time, I felt that I had to develop some niche for myself, to keep myself intellectually alive and agile, even though I continued to remain a member of parliament.
NP: Is the book an opportunity to make clear your political loyalties?
JR: Absolutely not. It is not a desire to rehabilitate Narasimha Rao in the Congress pantheon because that is not for me to do, nor has the Congress party tasked me with the responsibility for doing so. I was in the best position to tell the story, if I may say so with a little bit of immodesty. From the only people who could tell that story, two [Narasimha Rao and AN Verma, Rao’s principal secretary] are dead, and two are alive: [one is] Singh, and I am the fourth.
NP: Without the 1991 crisis, would Rao be a largely flat and forgotten leader?
JR: You see, in 1991, Manmohan Singh came to reforms out of conviction. Narasimha Rao, I still believe, came to it out of compulsion. But to be fair to Narasimha Rao, compulsion soon gave way to conviction because the rapidity of the turn-around of the Indian economy within two years was the fastest turn around in [the International Monetary Fund]’s history. I used to say at that time that the lowest that India had touched—two and a half per cent—was the highest that Mexico had touched, and Mexico was being touted as a great success story.
Also, when you are successful you tend to give some retrospective coherence to what you have done and in Narasimha Rao’s case, a lot was retrospective coherence. But I have seen the compulsion. Had that compulsion not been there on Rao, what got done in months may have taken years. India was changed in 33 days. One of my titles [for the book] was “33 days that changed India.”
NP: Is it fair to say that as prime minister, Manmohan Singh was a closer image of Narasimha Rao in 1991 than of himself at that time?
JR: [The period of] 2004 to 2014 was dramatically different [from 1991]. The politics became very bitter at that time. I think it was a great disaster for Indian politics that Mr Vajpayee was not active as leader of the opposition. Mr Narasimha Rao was running a minority government; Mr Manmohan Singh was running a multiparty coalition. The economics of the instances were different. There was no crisis in 2004, while there was a deep unprecedented crisis in 1991. Based on Dr Manmohan Singh’s tenure as finance minister in 1991, nobody should begrudge him his role during the country’s most crucial phase. His record as PM is something I will write about separately.
As regards why he [Singh] doesn’t come across as he was in 1991—a confident risk-taker—he was older during UPA. In 1991, he was 59 years old; when he became PM, he was 72. He staked his entire political capital on the Indo-US nuclear deal that became the “economic reforms issue”—what economic reform was in 1991, the Indo-US deal became in 2005.
NP: In his 1991 speech, Rao likened the position of the Congress to that of “a great cricketer missing his century by a solitary run.” What do you think he would have made of 2014?
JR: (Laughs) This is a difficult one to answer. He was very philosophical about things. He was neither a rabble-rouser, nor a demagogue. He was a thoughtful speaker. Would he have countered Modi effectively? I doubt it. My view is that culturally he was a Hindu but politically, he was not a Hindu. Some Congressmen have told me that he was a closet “knickerwala” [a member of the RSS], which I don’t think is true. I have heard him speak very disparagingly of the RSS and the BJP [Bharatiya Janata Party].
NP: A memorial was recently built in June 2015 to honour Narasimha Rao. It was reportedly“fast-tracked” by union urban development minister M Venkaiah Naidu with many seeing it as the Modi government's effort to over-write the Nehru-Gandhi legacy of the Congress.
JR: Undoubtedly. I think Mr KCR [chief minister of Telangana, Kalvakuntla Chandrashekar Rao], Mr Chandrababu Naidu [chief minister of Andhra Pradesh], Mr Venkaiah Naidu and [Prime Minister] Modi all want to appropriate Narasimha Rao. Like they appropriated [Swami] Vivekananda, [Vallabhbhai] Patel, [Subhash Chandra] Bose, Rajendra Prasad, and are trying to appropriate Lal Bahadur Shastri. They [the BJP and the RSS] are using yesterday’s figures to fight today’s political battles. Their biggest enemy is Nehru because as long as the Nehruvian legacy is in our genes, India cannot be a Hindu country. And they are propagating this myth that Narasimha Rao was anti-Sonia Gandhi. In my view, things are infinitely more complex than this. It is surely part of the process of appropriating icons and ideals and building up a narrative for them when they don’t have a narrative.
NP: With the BJP government in power for at least three more years, it would seem that there is going to be a political hiatus for you to keep yourself “intellectually busy.” Should we expect more books?
JR: I have three in the pipeline, which I hope to complete soon. I asked [the journalist and politician] Arun Shourie, who’s my good friend, “How do you keep busy when you’re out of power?” He told me, “I write a book every year to keep myself busy,” and I certainly seem to be following in his footsteps.