The major achievements in the political career of Pamulaparti Venkata Narasimha Rao were when he served as India's ninth Prime Minster from 1991-1996; twice served as the foreign affairs minister and once as the Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh.
He was born on the border of Andhra Pradesh and Maharastra but he chose to begin his political career with Andhra Pradesh state politics. His association with the congress party goes back to the pre-independence days. As he was growing up, he witnessed the Satyagraha Movement led by Gandhi and then participated in the Quit India Movement. He eventually became an active member in the Indian National Congress during the struggle for independence.
As a member of the Congress-I party,he served as a minister (1962-71) and chief minister (1971-73) in the Andhra Pradesh state government before his election to the Indian parliament in 1972. And it was his entry into national politics that made him a politician to remember.
He held (1980-89) several cabinet posts between 1980-89 under Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi , including foreign affairs minister and the defence minister. After Rajiv Gandhi's assassination in 1991, Rao was chosen to lead the Congress party, and when Congress won the elections that year, Rao became Prime Minister. In 1996, a corruption scandal rocked the government. When general elections were held in May, Rao and Congress were badly defeated, and he lost the prime ministership. He retained leadership of the Congress party until late 1996. In Sept., 2000, Rao was convicted of conspiring to buy votes in parliament prior to a 1993 no-confidence vote; he was sentenced to three years in prison.
PV Narasimha Rao as a MinisterP V Narasimha Rao was perhaps the most unlikely and unexpected figure to have influenced the course of India's foreign and security policies because, for the first 40 years of his political career, he was not a known figure in the Congress Party circle discussions on these subjects. Moreover, his background was that of a grassroots-level Congress leader.
In1980, Indira Gandhi, the then Prime Minister of India gave him the position of the External Affairs Minister. Towards the end of 1982, she moved him to the Ministry of Defence, and then to the Ministry of Home Affairs.
Rao assumed charge as foreign minister at a time when India's neighbourhood was in turmoil. Zia-ul-Haq was consolidating his in Pakistan. The Afghan revolution of 1978 and the Iranian revolution of 1979 had generated an atmosphere of uncertainty and tension. India's relations with Nepal, Sri Lanka and China were subject to tensions born of a number of bilateral issues going back to 1970s. The Cold War once again seemed to direct international politics. President Reagan was not in a position to continue the processes of understanding that Nixon had initiated with Brezhnev and Mao Tse Tung in the 1970s.
Russian troops had intervened in Afghanistan in support of the revolution brought about by leftist Afghan party. There was secret opposition to the revolution engineered by the US, and operationally supported by Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. These were the issues that Rao had to grapple with as foreign minister and defence minister until the mid-1980s.
Indira Gandhi assigned Rao the role of implementing and interpreting India's Afghanistan policies, and Indian policies towards the then Soviet Union. Rao had the difficult task of reconciling India's reservations about the Soviet Union invading Afghanistan, and the need to sustain a meaningful working relationship with the Soviet Union, on which India was enormously dependent for defence supplies and in economic terms. In his discussions with the Soviet foreign minister in 1980-81, he criticized their intervention in Afghanistan. He pointed out that the Soviet Union's Afghan policy would affect its international credibility and drain its military and economic resources. He also pointed out that their military activities were violating the human rights of the Afghans.
Simultaneously, Narasimha Rao also resumed more frequent dialogues with Pakistan. He feared President Zia-ul-Haq would take advantage of the US support to foment separatism in Jammu and Kashmir and the Punjab. Rao initiated bilateral foreign secretary level talks with Pakistan in June 1980, a process that continued almost till the end of Zia-ul-Haq's tenure as president of Pakistan.
Rao himself visited Islamabad, Lahore and Karachi in the summer of 1981, where he met the top leadership of Pakistan. To sum up Rao's role in Indo-Pakistan relations, the agenda chalked out by him, and the discussions that ultimately followed, resulted in agreements on Siachen, on the Tulbul Navigation Projects (Wullar Barrage Project), and on some aspects of economic cooperation. There was, of course, no progress in improving the security environment on issues related to Jammu and Kashmir, and on Pakistan sponsoring terrorist separatism in India.
Rao was also the first emissary to be sent to President Jayawardene of Sri Lanka, immediately after the large-scale anti-Tamil riots there. Rao pointed out the threat to Sri Lanka's unity and territorial integrity if the government does not meet Tamil aspirations. He also stressed that the large Tamil citizenry of India would compel India's involvement in Sri Lanka's ethnic crisis, and this could have a negative impact on Indo-Sri Lanka relations.
Iraq and Iran were at war from 1980 onwards. Rao, along with Isidoro Malmierca Peoli, Cuban foreign minister, undertook a shuttle diplomacy in 1983 to mediate between Iran and Iraq on behalf of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM). Rao's involvement in the effort was somewhat reluctant because as he felt that Indian mediation in a fight between two Islamic countries would not be effective. Nor could such mediation be effective, with the Soviets supporting the effort, and the Americans encouraging Iraqi aggressiveness. Rao took on this assignment only because Indira Gandhi felt that India, as chairperson of the NAM, was obliged to make an effort in a situation where two non-aligned countries were slaughtering each other.
After indira Gandhi's death in 1985, Rajiv Gandhi became the Prime Minister. Rajiv Gandhi had moved Rao to the ministries of education and human resources development in 1985, and brought him back to the external affairs portfolio in 1987In his second stint as foreign minister, he was involved with Rajiv Gandhi's initiatives on disarmament and arms control, and the ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka. Narasimha Rao had familiarized himself with these issues during his earlier stints as foreign minister in the Indira Gandhi government
In the late 1980s, Narasimha Rao advised Rajiv Gandhi on the need to refocus on problems of general disarmament and elimination of weapons of mass destruction. He was also concerned about NAM and pointed out that the political relevance of the movement as it existed was in the process of disintegration.
Rao's advice was an important input, leading to Rajiv Gandhi's five-nation initiative on disarmament, and his important proposals for disarmament submitted at the special session of the UN General Assembly in 1988-89. Rajiv Gandhi's initiatives to redefine the NAM terms of reference in the late 1980s, and his initiatives to resume high-level political contacts with China, though primarily personal decisions, were underpinned by the practical and thoughtful advice given by Narasimha Rao.
In 1987, the indo-sri lanka agreement was signed between India and Sri Lanka, which resulted in sending Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) to Sri Lanka. However, Rao felt that India rushed into signing the agreement and was of the opinion that India should have acted only as an external guarantor.
Rajiv Gandhi lost the elections in November 1989. The governments of Prime Minister V P Singh and Chandrasekhar followed from December 1989 to June 1991. Rao continued to drift away from mainstream national politics during these 18 months. He was all set to move out of Delhi and go back to Hyderabad, but the sudden death of Rajiv Gandhi made him stay on in Delhi.
A Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) terrorist assassinated Rajiv Gandhi on May 21, 1991. There was a scramble for the leadership of the Congress after Sonia Gandhi refused to succeed Rajiv Gandhi. Senior party leaders chose Narasimha Rao as the leader of the Congress Party's election campaign.
P V Narasimha Rao as the Prime Minister (1991-1996)The Congress won the elections, and the party nominated Narasimha Rao for the prime minister's post. He assumed charge in mid-June 1991. Rao lasted for a full term of five years, till June 1996, as one of the most effective and creative prime ministers of India.
As prime minister, Rao responded effectively to the profound transformation in international power equations, commencing with the fall of the Berlin Wall, and culminating in the disintegration of the Soviet Union in December 1991. During these five years, Rao brought about profound changes in India's foreign and national security policies.
By autumn 1991, Boris Yeltsin assumed power--- a development that ultimately led to the disintegration of the USSR. An important anchor of India's foreign policy had begun to disappear. This also meant the end of the Cold War between the US and former USSR. Moreover, the US's victory in the Gulf War established US politico-military supremacy in international affairs. The demolition of the Berlin Wall and the unification of Germany made Germany more prominent in European politics. Though he sustained relations with the Russian Federation, he consciously developed relations with the emerging international powers--- namely, the US, Western Europe and Japan
The end of the Cold War, and the disappearance of the USSR as a balancing factor, also resulted in a new initiative on the Palestine question, aiming at peace in the West Asia. There were also significant political developments in South Africa. He initiated entirely new and expanded connections with the countries of the South East Asian region, with South Africa and Israel, and the newly independent Central Asian Republics.
The break up of the Soviet Union resulted in uncertainties about the location and accountability of missiles. There were indications of Russia's desire to sell, and China's willingness to buy, large amounts of weapons, including those of the strategic category. Reports about China's political and strategic aspirations in Southeast Asia, and the corresponding projection of its naval forces in South China Sea and the Indian Ocean, could not be ignored. He improved the defence preparedness of the country, both in terms of its operational capacities and strategic clout. He gave further impetus to policies related to India's move towards nuclear weaponisation and enhancing its missile defence capacities.
He also signed a landmark accord for maintaining peace and tranquillity on the Sino-Indian border Line of Actual Control (LAC) in September 1993 in Beijing. This was meant to be the basis on which negotiations for the final settlement of the problematic boundary question were to follow.
He tried to stabilize relationships with Pakistan. He met Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif of Pakistan seven times, and sustained bilateral official dialogues with Pakistan from 1991 to February 1994, which resulted in a number of agreements on confidence building measures (CBMs), countering cross-border narcotics smuggling and cross-border crimes. A fair amount of progress was made towards agreements for the mutual withdrawal of troops in Siachen and demarcation of the Sir Creek boundaries, but they could not be finalised, primarily due to political compulsions in India and in Pakistan.
He initiated an extensive and dynamic programme of economic liberalisation, reforms and restructuring, which he managed by taking the unorthodox step of moving in Dr Manmohan Singh, an economist and administrator of repute, as the finance minister of India. A part of this programme was to give highest priority to economic objectives in India's foreign policy, to mobilise flows of investment and technology from abroad to India, and to implement policies that would expand the Indian market and improve India's access to foreign markets.
Narasimha Rao participated in summits of the UN Security Council, the NAM, the Commonwealth and the SAARC. A common thread in his policy orientations regarding multilateral diplomacy was to redefine the objectives and ideological basis, and reform these organisations to make them more representative. Rao was also a thoughtful advocate of UN reforms to make it more representative. He suggested expanded representation for member countries on the permanent seats in the Security Council.
However, in 1997, the CBI charge sheeted him and 11 others of bribery and corruption. In September 2000, the special court found him guilty of bribing four JMM MPs with Rs 50 lakh each for voting in favour of his government in July 1993.
Overall, in his tenures as foreign minister, defence minister and prime minister, he had managed his posts with political acumen and diplomacy. He was quick to grasp the changing political scenario at the international field and was successful in safe guarding india's various interests.
Custom Search
