The Hindu Business Line : The reformer and sage

EVEN AS fulsome praise has been lavished on P. V. Narashima Rao for his evangelical zeal in the pursuit of economic reforms when India was close to bankruptcy in the early 1990s, nobody paid him homage for the rare courage he had displayed in the course of his premiership itself to temper his gusto for reforms with a humane face.

It was during his sojourn in early 1994 to the Mecca of Industrialists, as he described Davos (Switzerland) to attend the World Economic Forum, I had the good fortune of accompanying him as part of the Prime Minister's media entourage. It was here that Narasimha Rao first let out his reservations on reforms when he openly proclaimed that India must find the "middle path," not letting the market or the state be the sole arbiter of economic decisions.

He cautioned the captains of world's industrial empires as also countries pursuing the so-called Washington Consensus path of economic liberalisation, deregulation and privatisation that changes being sought from developing countries must be "with a face of humanness which is part of our culture".

His words on the dangers of falling in line with a single track thinking at Davos are worthy to be read as they were spoken during the halcyon days of economic liberalisation: "One should not accept a dogma even if it happens to be only one in the field at a given moment. While change had to be accepted as a result of deliberate and objective thinking, at the same time, those who wear the shoe and know where it pinches should have full say in deciding how to mend it."

Narasimha Rao's words implicitly underscored the uncompromising economic sovereignty of each nation in accordance with its given circumstances. Subsequent developments bear this out as even multilateral lending agencies such as the World Bank and the IMF had had to recast their lending programmes, re-phrasing their conditionalities with good governance or poverty and social infrastructure to reflect the raging development debate.

Though Narasimha Rao was taciturn with a stern mien, his humour was always unalloyed. At the Davos meeting, when assembled chief executives of global companies posed several interesting questions to Narasimha Rao, he answered them to the point. But when a questioner warmed up to the issue of differences in the thinking of various political parties over the nature and scope of ongoing economic reforms even as Narasimha Rao himself did not have to contend with a congeries of disparate political parties with diametrically different ideologies, he simply said that by and large there was consensus for reforms. Then he gave a deliberate pause and threw his famous pout, stating impishly that "Opposition parties cannot publicly agree with the Government," amid peals of laughter and a sustained boom of applause.

The present coalition partners of the Government, as also those propping it up from outside, should pause and ponder what Narasimha Rao pertinently stated a decade ago about all political parties in India "as we do not have any insurmountable hurdles, that is the real part of the consensus in the country. This is something special in India and as the Opposition thinks what is being done is correct, in its own way, it is cooperating". Only a man with sagacity and perspicacity could say this.

From Davos, Narasimha Rao made a detour to Berlin, where he addressed the renowned citadel of learning, the Humboldt University, to standing ovation. Narasimha Rao drew a parallel with the indologist Max Mueller who faced hurdles when he set out to translate Vedic hymns as his detractors denounced him for embarking on a task for the next century.

He recalled the words of Mueller: "No one feels this more strongly than I do; no one has been more unwilling to make even a beginning in this arduous undertaking. Yet a beginning has to be made and we have to advance step by step to make a breach in that apparently impregnable fortress. My principle therefore has always been, let us translate what we can, and thus reduce the untranslatable portion to narrower and narrower limits".

Narasimha Rao remarked that "in that endeavour the restrictions of the untranslatable with limits defined more and more sharply, the politician has no less difficult a task than a writer or a scholar," highlighting, in the process, the howls of critics when he embarked upon an ambitious goal of integrating India into the global economy with a massive liberalisation agenda.

"In all that the politician or statesman does, his efforts must be to make the improbable possible, and to persuade his people, his adversaries and his friends, and above all himself that the impossible will so remain but need not affect, abridge, or inhibit the immense possibilities that yearn to be realised," was the advice of the sage.

If today the reforms in India face fatigue, it is not because there is greater opposition but because there is less commitment on the part of succeeding political leaders as they had to contend with warring allies who remain obdurate on their pet ideologies.

The greatest tribute the current leaders who inherited Narasimha Rao's economic legacy of emancipating India from the scourges of poverty, illiteracy and ill-health can him would be to acknowledge the tasks ahead and how these can be tackled by blending reforms with humanness so that even the unpersuasive would not remain so for ever.

If only this can be achieved, the credit should redound to the glory of Narashima Rao for a tectonic shift in thinking to realise the untapped potentials of India as he alone stands tallest as the trailblazer in the modern economic development of India.

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The reformer and sage