Rao’s father was P. V. Ranga Rao. He belonged to a wealthy Telugu Brahmin family from a village called Vangara (pedda) in the Karimnagar district of Andhra Pradesh, India.
Rao studied at Osmania University and at the Universities of Mumbai and Nagpur where he obtained Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in law. He was a polyglot and could speak 13 languages including Urdu, Marathi, Kannada, Hindi, Telugu and English with a fluency akin to a native speaker. His mother tongue was Telugu. In addition to seven Indian languages, he spoke English, French, Arabic, Spanish and Persian. Along with his cousin Pamulaparthi Sadasiva Rao, Rao edited a Telugu weekly magazine called Kakatiya Patrika from 1948 to 1955.
Rao was an active freedom fighter during the Indian Independence movement and joined full time politics after independence as a member of the Indian National Congress. Rao served brief stints in the Indian union cabinet (1962–1971) and as chief minister of the state of Andhra Pradesh (1971–1973).
When the Indian National Congress split in 1969 Rao stayed on the side of then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and remained loyal to her during the Emergency period (1975 - 77). He rose to national prominence in 1972 for handling several diverse portfolios, most significantly Home, Defence and Foreign Affairs (1980-1984), in the cabinets of both Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi. In fact it is speculated that he was in the running for the post of India’s President along with Zail Singh in 1982.
Rao very nearly retired from politics in 1991. It was the assassination of the Congress President Rajiv Gandhi that made him make a comeback. As the Congress had won the largest number of seats in the 1991 elections, he got the opportunity to head the minority government as Prime Minister. He was the first person outside the Nehru-Gandhi family to serve as Prime Minister for five continuous years, the first to hail from South India and also the first from the state of Andhra Pradesh. Since Rao had not contested the general elections, he then participated in a bye-election to join the parliament. He was elected from Nandyal with a victory margin of a record 5 lakh votes and his win was recorded in the Guinness Book Of World Records. His cabinet included Sharad Pawar, himself a strong contender for the Prime Minister’s post, as defence minister. He also broke convention by appointing a non-political economist, Manmohan Singh as his finance minister.
Rao’s father was P. V. Ranga Rao. He belonged to a wealthy Telugu Brahmin family from a village called Vangara (pedda) in the Karimnagar district of Andhra Pradesh, India.
Rao studied at Osmania University and at the Universities of Mumbai and Nagpur where he obtained Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in law. He was a polyglot and could speak 13 languages including Urdu, Marathi, Kannada, Hindi, Telugu and English with a fluency akin to a native speaker. His mother tongue was Telugu. In addition to seven Indian languages, he spoke English, French, Arabic, Spanish and Persian. Along with his cousin Pamulaparthi Sadasiva Rao, Rao edited a Telugu weekly magazine called Kakatiya Patrika from 1948 to 1955.
Rao was an active freedom fighter during the Indian Independence movement and joined full time politics after independence as a member of the Indian National Congress. Rao served brief stints in the Indian union cabinet (1962–1971) and as chief minister of the state of Andhra Pradesh (1971–1973).
When the Indian National Congress split in 1969 Rao stayed on the side of then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and remained loyal to her during the Emergency period (1975 - 77). He rose to national prominence in 1972 for handling several diverse portfolios, most significantly Home, Defence and Foreign Affairs (1980-1984), in the cabinets of both Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi. In fact it is speculated that he was in the running for the post of India’s President along with Zail Singh in 1982.
Rao very nearly retired from politics in 1991. It was the assassination of the Congress President Rajiv Gandhi that made him make a comeback. As the Congress had won the largest number of seats in the 1991 elections, he got the opportunity to head the minority government as Prime Minister. He was the first person outside the Nehru-Gandhi family to serve as Prime Minister for five continuous years, the first to hail from South India and also the first from the state of Andhra Pradesh. Since Rao had not contested the general elections, he then participated in a bye-election to join the parliament. He was elected from Nandyal with a victory margin of a record 5 lakh votes and his win was recorded in the Guinness Book Of World Records. His cabinet included Sharad Pawar, himself a strong contender for the Prime Minister’s post, as defence minister. He also broke convention by appointing a non-political economist, Manmohan Singh as his finance minister.
Rao’s major achievement generally considered to be the liberalization of the Indian economy. The reforms were adopted to avert impending international default in 1991. The reforms progressed furthest in the areas of opening up to foreign investment, reforming capital markets, deregulating domestic business, and reforming the trade regime. Rao’s government’s goals were reducing the fiscal deficit, Privatization of the public sector, and increasing investment in infrastructure. Trade reforms and changes in the regulation of foreign direct investment were introduced to open India to foreign trade while stabilizing external loans. Rao’s finance minister, Manmohan Singh, an acclaimed economist, played a central role in implementing these reforms.
Major reforms in India’s capital markets led to an influx of foreign portfolio investment. The major economic policies adopted by Rao include:
· Abolishing in 1992 the Controller of Capital Issues which decided the prices and number of shares that firms could issue.
· Introducing the SEBI Act of 1992 and the Security Laws (Amendment) which gave
· SEBI the legal authority to register and regulate all security market intermediaries.
· Opening up in 1992 of India’s
· equity markets to investment by foreign institutional investors and permitting Indian firms to raise capital on international markets by issuing
· Global Depository Receipts (GDRs).
· Starting in 1994 of the
· National Stock Exchange as a computer-based trading system which served as an instrument to leverage reforms of India’s other stock exchanges. The NSE emerged as India’s largest exchange by 1996.
· Reducing tariffs from an average of 85 percent to 25 percent, and rolling back quantitative controls. (The rupee was made convertible on trade account.)
· Encouraging foreign direct investment by increasing the maximum limit on share of foreign capital in joint ventures from 40 to 51 percent with 100 percent foreign equity permitted in priority sectors.
· Streamlining procedures for FDI approvals, and in at least 35 industries, automatically approving projects within the limits for foreign participation.
· The impact of these reforms may be gauged from the fact that total foreign investment (including foreign direct investment, portfolio investment, and investment raised on international capital markets) in India grew from a minuscule US $132 million in 1991-92 to $5.3 billion in 1995-96.
Rao began industrial policy reforms with the manufacturing sector. He slashed industrial licensing, leaving only 18 industries subject to licensing. Industrial regulation was rationalized.
Rao energized the national nuclear security and ballistic missiles program, which ultimately resulted in the 1998 Pokhran nuclear tests. It is speculated that the tests were actually planned in 1995, during Rao’s term in office, and that they were dropped under American pressure when the US intelligence got the whiff of it.[citation needed] He increased military spending, and set the Indian Army on course to fight the emerging threat of terrorism and insurgencies, as well as Pakistan and China’s nuclear potentials. It was during his term that terrorism in the Indian state of Punjab was finally defeated. Also scenarios of plane hijackings, which occurred during Rao’s time ended without the government conceding the terrorists’ demands. He also directed negotiations to secure the release of Doraiswamy, an Indian Oil executive, from Kashmiri terrorists who kidnapped him, and Liviu Radu, a Romanian diplomat posted in New Delhi in October 1991, who was kidnapped by Sikh terrorists. Rao also handled the Indian response to the occupation of the Hazratbal holy shrine in Jammu and Kashmir by Pakistan-sponsored[citation needed] terrorists in October 1993. He brought the occupation to an end without damage to the shrine. Similarly, he dealt with the kidnapping of some foreign tourists by a terrorist group called Al Faran in Kashmir in 1995 effectively. Although he could not secure the release of the hostages, his policies ensured that the terrorists demands were not conceded to, and that the action was condemned internationally, including by Pakistan.
Rao also made diplomatic overtures to Western Europe, the United States, and China. He decided in 1992 to bring into the open India’s relations with Israel, which had been kept covertly active since they were first established by Indira Gandhi in 1969[citation needed], and permitted Israel to open an embassy in New Delhi. He ordered the intelligence community in 1992 to start a systematic drive to draw the international community’s attention to alleged Pakistan’s sponsorship of terrorism against India and not to be discouraged by US efforts to undermine the exercise. Rao launched the Look East foreign policy, which brought India closer to ASEAN. He decided to maintain a distance from the Dalai Lama in order to avoid aggravating Beijing’s suspicions and concerns, and made successful overtures to Teheran. The ‘cultivate Iran’ policy was pushed through vigorously by him. These policies paid rich dividends for India in March 1994, when Benazir Bhutto’s efforts to have a resolution passed by the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva on the human rights situation in Jammu and Kashmir failed, with opposition by China and Iran.
Rao’s crisis management after the Mumbai blasts of March 12, 1993 was highly praised. He personally visited Mumbai after the blasts and after seeing evidence of Pakistani involvement in the blasts, ordered the intelligence community to invite the intelligence agencies of the US, UK and other West European countries to send their counter-terrorism experts to Mumbai to examine the facts for themselves.
Rao decided that India, which in 1991 was on the brink of bankruptcy, would benefit from liberalizing its economy. He appointed an economist, Dr. Manmohan Singh, a former governor of the Reserve Bank of India, as Finance Minister to accomplish his goals. This liberalization was criticized by many socialist nationalists at that time.
The Himalayan state of Jammu and Kashmir faced increased terrorist activity during Rao’s tenure. His government claimed that training camps in Pakistan administered Kashmir for these terrorists, previously directed at evicting the Soviet army from Afghanistan, were now producing the same fighters who were infiltrating Kashmir. He directly charged Pakistan with sheltering, arming and supplying infiltrators. During this time Hindu pilgrims and Sikh settlers were attacked, and hundreds of thousands of Kashmiri Pandits were forced to leave their homes in the Kashmir valley.Violence rocked and shut down parts of Kashmir, which was heavily dependent on tourism, and also struck major cities like Delhi and Mumbai. Similar terrorism spread into the northeastern states of Assam, Tripura and Nagaland.
Rao’s government introduced the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act (TADA),[49] India’s first anti-terrorism legislation, and directed the Indian Army to eliminate the infiltrators. Despite a heavy and largely successful Army campaign, the state descended into a security nightmare. Tourism and commerce were largely disrupted, and the people began living in fear of the terrorists. Special police units were often accused of committing atrocities against prisoners, including torture and excessive detention. Rao was criticized but the state remained relatively secure and finally made to a return to demcoracy in 1996.
A strong earthquake in Latur, Maharashtra, also killed 10,000 people and displaced hundreds of thousands in 1993. Rao was applauded by many for using modern technology and resources to organize major relief operations to assuage the stricken people, and for schemes of economic reconstruction.
In the 1996 general elections Rao’s Congress Party was badly defeated and he had to step down as Prime Minister. He retained the leadership of the Congress party until late 1996 after which he was replaced by Sitaram Kesri.
Rao rarely spoke of his personal views and opinions during his 5-year tenure. After his retirement from national politics Rao published a novel called The Insider (ISBN 0-670-87850-2). The controversial book, which follows a man’s rise through the ranks of Indian politics, resembled events from Rao’s own life. (See Gonzo journalism.) Rao, however denied any connection.
Rao suffered a heart attack on 9 December 2004, and was taken to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences where he died 14 days later at the age of 83.
He was cremated with full state honors. His body was kept in state at the Jubilee Hall in Hyderabad. His funeral was attended by the incumbent Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, former Prime Minister H. D. Deve Gowda, the incumbent BJP president L.K. Advani, the Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee, the Finance Minister P. Chidambaram and many other dignitaries.
· Rao picked conservative BJP leader
· Atal Behari Vajpayee to represent India in a debate on
· disarmament at the · United Nations.
· Although they were political opponents, Vajpayee’s pro-nuclear stance was in accordance with Rao’s own views. Vajpayee later became the Prime Minister.
· He was a cartoonists delight with his trademark pout being one of the focussed points.
· According to Vajpayee, when he became the PM in 1996 Rao handed him a piece of paper which simply stated ‘Bomb is ready. You can go ahead.’ (referring to a nuclear device) and asked that it should not be made public. Vajpayee revealed this only after Rao’s death.
· The Express Highway between Sarojini Devi Eye Hospital and Aramgarh on NH 7 to the International Airport in
· Hyderabad is named after Rao.
Narasimha Rao quotes
· “When I don’t make a decision, it’s not that I don’t think about it. I think about it and make a decision not to make a decision.”
· “Inaction is also an action.”
· “Law will take its own course of action.”
· “Time itself is the solution to all problems.”
