PV Narasimha Rao will be remembered for liberalising the Indian economy during his tenure as the country’s 9th prime minister. The veteran Congressman, who passed away in 2004 at the age of 82, has now been awarded the Bharat Ratna posthumously.
In this 2004 interview with ThePrint Editor-in-Chief Shekhar Gupta for NDTV’s Walk The Talk, the former prime minister talked about, among other things, his political journey, the 1991 reforms, the BJP and where he saw India headed.
Shekhar Gupta (SG): It’s a rare occasion for somebody in the media to be chatting with you particularly on camera.
PV Narasimha Rao (PV): This is equally rare to me.
SG: Well at least your sense of humor is not dented or faded by the rigours of being out of power.
PV: No, it has not been dented by being in power.
SG: I see. Why do you say so?
PV: In fact, after I went out of power, maybe it has come back.
SG: So did you lose it a little bit when you were in power?
PV: You have to lose it. When you are in power you have to lose many things in life.
SG: Do you find that too much of our politics and too many of our politicians are still talking of the past? There is not enough promise for the future in our politics. Either you vote against injustices of the past or you vote for glory of the past. Why is our politics frozen in the past?
PV: Do you find any area where you only talk about the future?
SG: Well if you look at say an American election campaign, people are talking about what happens to our children, our grandchildren, health care, taxes, education. Here it is more about either a mosque and a temple or about Gandhi and Nehru or about Lord Ram. It is all in the past. All about Marx and Lenin. So if you see the three main streams of Indian politics, each one wants votes from today’s voters on the basis of either achievements of the past or glories of the past or injustices of the past.
PV: You see what you promise for the future is strengthened by what you have done in the past. We have done nothing in the past and promise everything in the future, your credibility suffers.
SG: Sir, wouldn’t you rather that our politics still talk more of the future than the past? Is it too much in the past?
PV: We have more in the past, much more in the past, in our past than the past of the other country people you were referring to.
SG: So all this is going on right now, the talk about shining India, feel good, 8% growth. From your vantage point, how do you look at this? Does it impress you? Does it amuse you? Does it irritate you?
PV: No, why should it irritate me? I have no need to be irritated when someone says India is shining. When he goes on to suggest that he is the cause for it, there of course one will differ. See, if there is good rain, I am a farmer, I have a good harvest, there is no need for me to feel sad. It’s all shining to me. But if you say you have brought the rain, then I differ. That’s all.
SG: Take us back to 1991 when you took over power and the challenges that faced you and what persuaded you to change this?
PV: Well, persuaded because logically we had come up against a blank wall. There was nothing more to do. You see, you had no money. You were going to become a defaulter within two weeks. And you can imagine what it means for India to become a defaulter. We have always been paying our installments of debt in advance. That has been our record. Once you become a defaulter, your entire economy, your honour, your place in the committee of nations, everything goes haywire and you have really no face to show.
SG: You were a lifelong socialist or you were brought up in the Nehruvian milieu. When did you conclude that look, this has to change, the world has changed? Was it in the first couple of weeks? Was it a chat with Nehru?
PV: You see, Nehru was the person who said something about his not being Nehruite. Gandhi was a person who said very strongly that I am not a Gandhiite. You see, this becoming ‘-ite’ becomes something frozen. Gandhi was never static nor was Nehru. Why did Nehru leave the whole of agriculture in the private sector? Not many people realise it.
SG: And not go the way of either Lenin or Ben Gurion.
PV: Right. So, he said it in so many words that if you are talking of socialism, don’t misunderstand. It’s not being imported from abroad. It is being evolved under our own conditions. So, that should suffice as a permanent answer in favour of what really Nehru wanted to do and what we are trying to do.
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SG: So, for you it was not such a big instinctive shift. It was not like Deng Xiaoping changing the Chinese economy.
PV: No, you have to read my presidential speech in Tirupati in 1992.
SG: In fact, I was there at that time in Tirupati. It was a very hot day. 50 degrees I think it was.
PV: Yeah, I traced from Nehru to what I was doing and no one could say that it is a sudden shift or sudden U-turn. You cannot afford U-turns in this country. You cannot.
SG: So, how do you make a U-turn without making a U-turn? That’s a special Narasimha Rao art.
PV: No, no, it’s not like that. It’s not like that. If you understand that where you are standing is itself in motion.
SG: That’s a clever way of putting it.
PV: See, turning becomes easier. You are not static. That’s what I have just told you. You are not static. Never static. Look at what Gandhi ji has done. Look at what Pandit ji has done a little more carefully.
SG: So, you had no feeling that you were leaving something behind, that a faith with which you had gone on for 40 years, you are now junking that and moving on to a new path.
PV: Well, I didn’t feel that. I thought we are only growing up. I can’t possibly make do with the clothes I wore 50 years back.
SG: When you managed this change, shift, U-turn without a U-turn, did you have to deal with many doubts?
PV: No, I don’t think I managed it. It was an objective situation which had its own impact, its own momentum. It was created. Dr. Manmohan Singh did his very best to push it forward. Behind him I stood like a rock giving him political support through thick and thin. So, this is the kind of teamwork.
SG: In fact, Dr. Manmohan Singh said on this show, he described how he quietly devalued the rupee, went to the RBI governor because he had not got the vote of confidence. In fact, you told him that if it goes alright, it’s fine. If it goes wrong, then you may pay for it with your job.
PV: No, I didn’t quite tell him that because we may also have to pay for it. Because it’s not just the finance minister, it is the duo. The prime minister giving him the political wherewithal, the armour which he needs. And the finance minister being an expert in the job in which I don’t interfere unless I find that from the people there will be something like a backlash. Then of course, I have to warn him and he takes the warning and takes into consideration that warning.
SG: There were occasions when you pulled him back as on the question of subsidies.
PV: Yeah, quite right. There were many occasions where I encouraged him. When I found him diffident, when people attacked him, I said, attack me, don’t attack him. He is not a politician. Let him do his job. So, there it’s a question of managing people.
SG: Did you ever think things will change so fast in India? In 1991, could you have imagined 2004 of today?
PV: Well, I couldn’t have imagined 2004 of today. In fact, I may have imagined 2010. I was realistic enough that without passing through 2004, you can’t reach 2010.
SG: But Mr. Rao, there are those who say and you have critics in your own party as well, that the cases that you had to endure over the past 5 years was also a kind of a price or retaliation or punishment for Hawala and things that you did to some of your own party men.
PV: I don’t think so because all this is disinformation historically, factually. All this is wrong. But of course, you have to be ready for allegations that are baseless. Because until– only you know that they are baseless, the whole world doesn’t. They go by what actually happens.
SG: On the question of allegations being baseless, would you say that the Hawala cases ultimately were also as baseless as cases against you?
PV: Well, they are as baseless as they were found by the courts. That’s all there is to it. You see, if you really go into the nitty-gritty, I don’t know, again I am getting into a field which perhaps doesn’t allow me to explain myself in full. There are two fields. One is the legal field. One is the political field. There is much in common, but they are not identical. The tactics are not identical. The conclusions are not identical. The logic is not identical. Therefore, for a perspective, you will have to know both the fields and also distinguish where a politically correct decision can become legally incorrect. This is possible. I have shown it. I have seen it.
SG: But you were not playing politics in the Hawala cases?
PV: Oh, no.
SG: Because there are those in your party who think that was one way of sidelining many likely challengers in your party.
PV: Who?
SG: All the Hawala victims say so
PV: Who? Including Mr. Advani?
SG: Yes, indeed. Certainly. Certainly he thinks that you were victimising him.
PV: You are making me too big for my shoes. You see, I came just for five years in a fortuitous way. And I don’t think I had developed within those five years all these crooked qualities, crooked characteristics. I never thought about them. And no one among those who know me has ever accused me of anything even remotely resembling what you are saying.
SG: Mr. Rao, will you tell me how intense was the pressure on you at that time? Kashmir erupting, crisis in Babri Masjid, Charar-i-Sharief, pressure on human rights, proliferation.
PV: Well, the pressure on human rights is very interesting. We used to get one missive every day or every three days from the Amnesty International. The answer to that was we had our own Human Rights Commission. And after that, the Amnesty International just forgot about India.
SG: But the pressure from America, was there a lot of pressure from America on questions of… but there was pressure on proliferation. Don’t test, don’t test.
PV: That of course they have been saying since Pandit ji‘s time. So what is new about that? And we didn’t quite oblige. That’s also not new.
SG: But that is something on which in history there is still a question mark and let’s not wait for your book. Is it true that we came close to testing but we did not under American pressure?
PV: Oh, this is something which I have answered several times. This secret will perish along with me. It will never come out of my mouth. It’s for you and lots of books have been written. All off the mark. Some a little less off, some very much off.
SG: So, when will be the right time for history to know what exactly happened?
PV: No, they will never know. It’s from me and it will not come from you. You can go on approximating.
SG: But why must you not make it part of the record of history? Lots of time has gone by now.
PV: I am under an oath. An oath for me is something very sacred. It’s not like cabinet papers being circulated in advance.
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SG: Being rented out as is sometimes the case. Final word on a couple of things. And this is prescriptive. And don’t shy away from it. One, and I will ask you both questions now and you can answer them at the end. One, what is your prescription for the Congress party? The party is not doing very well. Whatever the polls might say. The party has been out of power now for several years. It may be out of power again for five years. What is your prescription? There was something that Lord Meghnad Desai wrote in my paper on how the Congress party should rediscover itself or reinvent itself like the Labour of England.
PV: Well, I think the Congress party had been out of power for 60 years before winning a great struggle. So not being in power is nothing new to the party. And if you are suggesting that, you are only misleading Congress. Personally, I attach least importance to coming into power or being in power. The question is what you do for the country. You remember, I am sure, that the first resolution on non-alignment came from the then Congress working committee in 1946. One and a half years before independence came.
SG: So what you are saying is you can build an agenda while you are not in power
PV: Quite right. That is exactly what you do.
SG: The other question on which I want a prescription is India’s place in the world. Are you in agreement with the way this government or India has moved with Pakistan and America in the last two years? Is that the direction to go to?
PV: Now Pandit ji, if I remember right, made it very clear that India is not really trying or asking for a leadership role. India is really about to play or has been playing an integrating role. There is a world of difference between the two. And I think India will continue to be playing the same role.
SG: Sir, but on Pakistan, do you see that this peace process will be more long lasting, will be more durable than the ones in the past? You tried a couple of times, it didn’t work. You think this time, because the army is actually in power, there is nobody to sabotage, this may go, this may last longer. I am asking you as a statesman, I am not asking you as a partisan.
PV: You see, it is very difficult for me sitting in Delhi, even to have a guess, hazard a guess on what happens on the Pakistan side. So far as India is concerned, I have not known any moment or any stage when we did not have a desire for good relations with Pakistan. This is not just because I am an Indian. Go deep into all the facts, apply your mind impartially. This is the irresistible conclusion you will come to.
SG: But the initiative now that Mr. Vajpayee has taken the kind of political commitment he has put behind it, are you in agreement? I am again asking you as a statesman, please for a moment forget your Congressmen hat
PV: Everybody will be in agreement with any effort made by India to bring close relations between India and Pakistan. Is there any two opinion or there?
SG: But for a BJP leadership to do so?
PV: No, no, it does not matter which leadership. If you look at it the wrong way, only then you will try to invent some links.
SG: Would you see some danger of oversimplification in this argument?
PV: No, I don’t see any oversimplification. So long as you know that you have no 100 percent guarantee of success in advance, you are doing something for the nth time. But every time you do it to succeed. You don’t do it just for the sake of the record.
SG: Mr. Rao, you said at one point that in 1991 you were not looking at 2004, you were looking at 2010. Now 2004, after eight years of long rainy season, monsoon, when you had time to think, reflect, where do you see India in 2010? Irrespective of who comes to power.
PV: Well, I find that 2010 is not very far from 2004. It is much closer to what it was in 1991. It’s obvious to me and I have every evidence to believe that.
SG: To believe that India is on the right path?
PV: Yes, absolutely.
SG: So, where do you see India in 2010? Do you see as a middle developed country? Do you see an India without problems in its neighbourhood?
PV: You see, this categorization is something which baffles me. What is middle class in one country becomes a lower class in another country.
SG: But you are optimistic?
PV: I am absolutely optimistic. A 5,000 year old civilization will not just go by the follies or mistakes of one generation. No generation is that powerful as to destroy India.
SG: But the wisdom of one generation can take it forward.
PV: Yes, certainly.
SG: And you find today’s generation having the wisdom?
PV: There is wisdom flowing as a river and the river has its own crocodiles, it has its own ups and downs, the bhanwar jisko kehte hain, the whirls and all that. Let’s be a little philosophical in the sense that you can’t be otherwise. You see, this country has to be philosophical, has to be looking far into the future. You just can’t say that what happened yesterday is this, therefore I don’t want to look at it.
SG: That’s why we want leaders like you with your experience joining at least the political discourse, if not the political mainstream and campaigns because you bring so much philosophical knowledge, wisdom, experience.
PV: I bring solace.
SG: Solace, very important.
PV: I bring solace and nothing is so important to a country of this size and complexity than solace which renews your hope.
SG: Right. Well, Sir, that’s as good a note as any to conclude this interview with.
PV: Thanks.
SG: Marvellous chatting with you. I wish more people had the opportunity to sit with you and gain wisdom
PV: Let’s see. And thank you very much.
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