To the Brink and Back: India’s 1991 Story (12 page)

My objective is to make India truly self-reliant. Self-reliance is not a mere slogan for me. It means the ability to pay for our imports through exports. My motto is—trade, not aid. Aid is a crutch. Trade builds pride. And India has been trading for thousands of years.

Friends, Rajiv Gandhi came to power in 1984. He first understood the need for India to change her traditional way of thinking and doing things. He realized that if India is to survive and prosper, fundamental economic reforms must be carried out. He did that. What we have done is a continuation of the policies initiated by him.

Social and Economic Philosophy

In my first address to you I had outlined the agenda of my government. We stand committed to that agenda. The Budget which will be presented on July 24 will clearly articulate the social and economic philosophy of my government, the broad outlines of which are evident in our actions.

What is this outline?

We believe that a bulk of government regulations and controls on our economic activity have outlived their utility. They are stifling the creativity and innovativeness of our people. Excessive controls have also bred corruption. Indeed, they have come in the way of achieving our objectives of expanding employment opportunities, reducing rural-urban disparities and ensuring greater social justice.

We believe that the Nation, as well as the Government, must learn to live within its means. Normally, a family borrows money to buy an asset and not to meet daily expenditure. So it is with the Government. There is much fat in Government expenditure. This can and will be cut.

We believe that Government concessions must be for the poor and the really needy. Over the past few years, expenditure on this has increased substantially and in many instances the concessions are being enjoyed by people who are not in dire need of them. This must change

India Cannot Lag Behind

We believe that India has much to learn from what is happening elsewhere in the world. Many countries are bringing in far-reaching changes. We find major economic transformation sweeping large countries like the Soviet Union and China, as well as small countries in Eastern Europe. There is a change in outlook, a change in mindset everywhere. India too cannot lag behind if she has to survive, as she must, in the new environment.

Our commitment to work for the uplift of the poor, the underprivileged and the disadvantaged is firm and irrevocable. We believe that this is best achieved if Government concentrates on providing drinking water, on expanding education, on fighting social discrimination, on creating jobs, on establishing infrastructure. Our measures must reflect this ideology.

I wish to assure you that while we are restructuring the economy to make it more productive and efficient, prices will be kept under the strictest control. We will ensure adequate availability and supply of essential commodities.

Friends, it will be dishonest for me to pretend that the job of repairing our economy will be easy, quick or smooth. Each one of us will be called upon to make sacrifices. This is no time for partisan politics. I need the cooperation of each and every one of you. I need your support, your understanding. Together, we will succeed.

I could not believe that the prime minister had conveyed my speech to the nation
in toto
. There was now a spring in my step, and I shared my excitement with the principal secretary the very next day. He was phlegmatic as ever and said that perhaps the prime minister had been too preoccupied to find the time to draft his own speech. Nonetheless, I felt mighty pleased that the master draftsman had actually used my draft. Indeed, this time, as a result, the style of his speech was more direct and pointed; it stood out in contrast to the normal Narasimha Rao offering, given its pithiness. There wasn’t much philosophy. I would not know it then, but this was my first and last success with him as far as speeches went.

But the story of this speech does not stop here. In January 1993, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting brought out the first volume of selected speeches of the prime minister, from his assumption of office in June 1991 up to June 1992. Strangely—and it could have been done only with his approval—the
9 July 1991 broadcast to the nation does not figure in the collection. The volume starts with his very first speech of 22 June 1991 and then jumps to his speech in the Lok Sabha on 15 July 1991. The omission is bizarre, to say the least, and it would appear that the prime minister did not wish to leave behind this speech for posterity in his published collected works, although copies of the speech had been officially printed and circulated after it had been delivered.

If it were any other speech, it would not have merited much attention. But this was an address to the nation after all. And it was his very first address devoted exclusively to economic issues, in which he explained the country’s predicament in simple, easy-to-understand language and laid out his government’s agenda clearly. I have no idea why this happened! I can only recall the unforgettable conversation in ‘Silver Blaze’ in
The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes
:
⁵²

[Inspector Gregory:] ‘Is there any point to which you would wish to draw my attention?’

[Holmes:] ‘To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.’

[Inspector Gregory:] ‘The dog did nothing in the night-time.’

‘That was the curious incident,’ remarked Sherlock Holmes.

⁵¹
I tried to get hold of the officially printed copy of this speech from the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting but was unsuccessful. Finally, an official copy was made available to me in June 2015 by P.V. Prabhakar Rao, Narasimha Rao’s youngest son (Annexure 8).

⁵²
Arthur Conan Doyle,
The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes
(London: Doubleday, 1894).

n 15 July 1991, the motion of confidence—moved three days
earlier—came up for voting in the Lok Sabha. But before the actual
vote, the House was treated to a vintage Narasimha Rao performance.
It was his first major speech in the Lok Sabha as prime minister. Rao
had been given briefs on different subjects. But he decided, as always,
to speak not from text but spontaneously.

That day, the prime minister was at his philosophical best. At times,
what he said appeared convoluted, but that was par for the course.
He defended what the government had done since it had taken over.
He was not partisan but made the point effectively that the situation
he had inherited had left his finance minister and him with no other
option but to embark upon a series of tough measures—gold sales,
devaluation, talks with the IMF, and trade reforms, with industrial
liberalization also imminent.

The highpoint of Rao’s forty-five minute intervention came when
he lapsed into
Sanskrit:

What have I done? What had the government done? We know that there are no alternatives to what we have done. We have only salvaged the prestige of this country.
Sarvanashe samutpanne ardham tyajati panditah
. This is precisely what we have done. I do not say that the economy has been booming or is going to boom immediately. What I am saying is s
arvanashe samputpanne
.

I could see that most people did not understand what the prime minister was saying. I recall
A.N. Verma looking at me with a puzzled expression, then whispering, ‘
Kaho, Pandit, kuch samjhe
? (Tell me, wise one, do you comprehend this?)’ Later, I told Verma that the
Sanskrit saying in the prime minister’s speech means that the wise man, in the event of total ruin, wriggles out by giving up half his possessions; this is done in the hope that he will save himself from total destruction by using what is left properly.

Even if Rao’s expressions made little sense to those present, he definitely appeared Upanishadic. Moreover, he had unknowingly served notice to the
BJP—Sanskrit was not its monopoly!

The prime minister was not yet done with Sanskrit in the Lok Sabha. He went on:

Naturally, there is a long distance to go. This is not all. This is not the final solution, this is only the beginning. If you do not have a beginning, you cannot have an end. Therefore, the journey, the
mahaprashthana
, starts today after taking these decisions.

I think
mahaprashthana
⁵³
may have been more easily understood by those present, but I am not entirely sure. Regardless, it was a nice Indian way of describing the economic reforms programme and giving it a spiritual dimension, as it were. Besides, as the prime minister spoke, I recalled that in his speech to the
CPP on 20 June, he had—drawing from the Congress’ own legacy—underlined that the relationship between the leader and the people is spiritual and not related to posts!

That Narasimha Rao could draw from ancient wisdom to throw light on current issues is further revealed by his unpublished manuscript, ‘Liberalisation and the Public Sector’ (Annexure 9). In this, while reflecting on the perils of India falling into a debt trap, Narasimha Rao recalled Cārvāka philosophy, which proclaimed, ‘
Rinam krithva ghritam pibet
. (Make debts and enjoy yourself.)’ He went on to explain why this ancient school of Indian materialism said so: ‘
Bhasmeebhutasya dehasya punaraagamanam kuthah
. (Once your body is consigned to the funeral pyre, where is it going to come back from?)’ Rao concluded by saying that when it comes to a state or the nation, this reckless outlook is still more disastrous since the state and the nation will last forever, unlike the individual. I only wish I could have discussed this further with Narasimha Rao since I believe the materialist traditions in Indian philosophy have been unfairly downplayed and distorted in favour of mysticism and spirituality.
⁵⁴
These materialist traditions, incidentally, are all-too-evident now.

As far as the 15 July vote itself was concerned, it was a foregone conclusion once the Left parties and those that made up the National Front (like the Janata Dal) decided to walk out. The
BJP voted ‘no’, but was hopelessly outnumbered. While the non-BJP opposition was very critical of the Rao-Singh economic policies, clearly it did not want the government to fall.

And so, we lived another day.

⁵³
Mahaprasthanika Parva
or ‘Book of the Great Journey’ is also the seventeenth of eighteen books that make up the Mahabharata and deals with the ascent of the Pandavas to Mount Sumeru.

⁵⁴
One of the most fascinating books I have ever read is Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya,
Lokayata: A Study in Ancient Indian Materialism
(New Delhi: People’s Publishing House, 1959).

he prime minister was quite sensitive to what eminent economists were saying about his government’s policies even though he did not show it. I witnessed this first-hand when, perhaps on 25 or 26 July 1991, I sent him an interview that
Dr K.N. Raj had just then given
Frontline
(Annexure 10). As part of the interview, when he was asked what his views were on the finance minister’s assessment that there was no alternative to a large IMF
loan if India were to tide over the economic crisis, Raj said:

There are two propositions here. One, that there are certain conditions attached by the IMF to the extension of the loan. Second, that we have no alternative. I do not myself know what are all the conditions that have been imposed. But I have sufficient confidence in
Manmohan Singh because he has very wide experience. He is not another economist; he is a person who has worked in a very wide range of organisations so that he is familiar with the entire background. […] So I have no reason to question his assessment.

Further, when asked if India would stand to lose her economic independence if she were to accept an IMF loan, Raj said:

I am not terribly bothered about the leftist position because they have a high-minded, doctrinaire approach when they are out of power. If the leftists were in power today I know exactly what they would have done. They would have accepted these [loan conditions]. So that does not affect my judgment.