Deciphering the enigma that was Narasimha Rao

The current PM might run him close but possibly no other leader of post-Independent India has evoked as many conflicting emotions as Pamulaparti Venkata Narasimha Rao.
In an entertaining evening session chaired by Suhel Seth, and featuring Jairam Ramesh of the Congress, Sanjaya Baru, former media advisor to Dr Manmohan Singh, and Vinay Sitapati, author of a recent – and much-praised – biography of Rao, it was asked whether the unassuming Andhra man was India’s best prime minister.
Ramesh’s answer was an unambiguous no. “But, did he change India’s economic direction? Did he convert a crisis into a magnificent opportunity? Did he show political courage to carry the change through? Was he bold in his policy making? Did he make egregious mistakes? The answers to these questions is yes.”
Rao, said Ramesh, experienced striking success and striking failure. And having taken over at a time of extreme economic crisis, he was able to engineer a paradigm shift in India’s economic policy. “He was an extraordinarily erudite man, our most scholarly PM, and the most multilingual of our PMs.”
Baru said that to judge a leader’s record, it’s important to look at what he or she inherited when they became prime minister, and what legacy they left behind when they departed from office. “Rao came to power when India was facing chaos and virtual bankruptcy, when India had no allies after the collapse of the Eastern bloc. By the time he left, he had taken India to the verge of testing a nuclear device.
“But Rao has been completely erased from memory, and from the record of his own party,” lamented Baru. Sitapati, a self-confessed “child of 1991”, said the way Congress treated Rao after his retirement was “disgraceful”.
Continued Sitapati, “He spoke very little but thought a lot, and took lots of notes. He was a man of action, and he realised that if you want to bring about change, you should never talk about it.”
Ramesh described Rao as an extremely self-confident man. “His greatest strength was his silence. He took whatever was happening in his stride, and would strike at the right time.
“When he was being attacked in Parliament for mortgaging India’s sovereignty, he responded in Sanskrit, saying, ‘I’ve done something that had to be done, I haven’t done anything transformational.
“For political salesmanship, he was using an idiom that was rooted in the Indian ethos.” Rao’s complicity (or not) in the demolition of Babri Masjid, and in the Anti-Sikh pogrom of 1984, and the part he played in the nuclear program, all came under scrutiny. He was an enigma in life, and continues to remain so after death. “Rao was a nondescript state minister and a lacklustre chief minister. There was nothing in his career to suggest that he would go on to become a successful prime minister,” said Ramesh.
The last word goes to Baru. “Someone who was a lifelong number two became a number one, and decided to act like one.”