Half - Lion: How P.V. Narasimha Rao Transformed India

by Vinay Sitapati

  The third and final pillar of Indira’s socialist economy was isolation from the global market. Protection from foreign competition became integral to the government’s strategy of self-reliance. Entry of foreign money, companies and consumer goods was limited. There were also import restrictions on the raw materials and technology that Indian factories desperately needed. And exports were made unprofitable due to an artificially valued currency. This need for self-reliance was, in economist I.G. Patel’s words, ‘our cardinal sin’.73 It consigned India to produce second-rate rather than get the best from the world.

  These three pillars of the licence-permit-quota raj led to public sector dominance over the Indian economy. But state-run companies worldwide are not known for their efficiency, and the Indian public sector was particularly incompetent and corrupt. As Manmohan Singh put it, public sector-led investments were chronically unproductive,74 and the few products they did make—such as HMT watches—would perhaps have never been purchased by customers if they had other options. The result of these controls was a ‘Hindu rate of growth’.75 Between 1960 and 1979, humble Malawi grew by 2.9 per cent per capita, while the world’s largest democracy grew at just 1.4 percent.76

  More striking—for a policy ostensibly for the poor—was that government revenue was so low that welfare schemes were unable to make a dent in poverty.77 Indian socialism was more bark than bite.

  Narasimha Rao, the Andhra minister, ideologically supported Indira Gandhi’s leftward turn. While prime minister Rao would decisively dismantle the licence raj, the early Rao was genuinely sympathetic to economic controls. At a conference of the Andhra Pradesh backward classes, he even declared, ‘We will not tolerate capitalists, even if he is a Harijan [Dalit].’78

  Narasimha Rao’s loud support for economic socialism spoke of a dual personality. At one level, the mouse-sized Rao was introverted and cautious. His childhood traumas—adoption, having to leave home, and early marriage—had made him solitary. He could connect with neither village nor wife. Rao’s education and natural curiosity had also distanced him from rustic family and friends. In his political career, this isolation had translated into never choosing one party faction or personality cult over the other. It was a strategy that won him few friends or followers, but it also made him very few enemies. Such a restrained disposition would have normally made for a circumspect policymaker—with neither durable principles nor abiding concerns.

  But such were the paradoxes of Rao that when it came to running the education, health, law, and endowments ministries, he had acted like a lion. His childhood observation of feudalism as well as the Nizam’s tyranny had exposed him to the inequities of India. The influences of Ramananda Tirtha and Nehru had uncovered for him the inadequacies of gradual reform. Like the rest of the Congress-left, Rao supported an all-powerful state battling unjust feudals and unscrupulous businessmen.

  There was yet another socialist policy on which Narasimha Rao’s beliefs coincided with Indira Gandhi’s political calculations. This was land reform, which, by the early 1970s, was a burning issue through much of the country. It was a cause for which Narasimha Rao was prepared to stake—and burn—his own career.

  3

  Puppet Chief Minister, 1971–73

  At Indian Independence, 40 per cent of all land was owned by revenue intermediaries, known as zamindars or jagirdars.1 Breaking the power of this class was a vital plank of the freedom struggle. By 1966, not only were these lands freed from intermediary control, the government estimated that 200 million tenants of former intermediaries had been brought into a direct relationship with the state.2 Some of these new owners were the former village agents (i.e. the doras or deshmukhs) who anyways had exercised control over the land. They became the new title holders, and employed others to till the land. Various states had attempted to pass on ownership to the tillers and the millions who were still landless.

  These reforms had failed mainly because the new landlords belonged to the dominant castes who were the spine of the Congress in the villages.3 Land ownership was especially lopsided in Telangana, a bequest from the Nizam’s rule. These inequalities persisted even after the first phase of land reform laws. ‘It was largely the Reddy ryots and tenants who benefitted from land redistribution, while Dalits and lower castes had to be content with common pastures and wastelands.’4 Renewed land reform was Indira Gandhi’s bait to lure the poor and lower castes back to her party.

  Narasimha Rao approved of his leader’s strategy. He had always spoken in favour of land reform, a persistent theme in his guru Ramananda Tirtha’s politics. What gave Rao new purpose was the agitation, in 1969, for the separate state of Telangana. Narasimha Rao felt that underlying the demand was the clamour by the landless for land of their own.

  Captain V. Lakshmikantha remembers meeting Rao in his village during the height of the agitation. Rao came back after a dusty day’s work, washed his feet outside, then walked in and said, ‘There must be land ceiling [against large landowners]. Or there will be blood.’5

  It was an insight that also occurred to Indira Gandhi, as a pro-Telangana party defeated the Congress in many constituencies in the region in the 1971 national elections.6 Land redistribution was a way for the Congress party to score three wins—reduce the power of the landlords, prevent blood being spilt in Telangana, and wrest seats back for the party.

  The chief minister of Andhra Pradesh at the time was K. Brahmananda Reddy. He was liked by local Congressmen, was from a landed caste and came from a coastal district. In the eyes of prime minister Indira Gandhi, these made for three arguments against him. She wanted someone whom she could mould, someone who would attract backward castes and landless peasants, and a Telangana man who could placate the region.

  Indira began to look for a ‘nominated’ chief minister. It was a concept that Narasimha Rao would explain some years later in a speech at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London.7 A ‘nominated’ chief minister would have no local power base, thus ensuring loyalty to New Delhi and its socialism. Indira was looking for a powerless devotee. One who would sing only her hymns.

  Chief minister Brahmananda Reddy was asked if he was okay with being replaced by D. Sanjivayya, a past chief minister who was also a Dalit. Reddy ‘strongly opposed’ the suggestion since Sanjivayya might threaten Reddy’s hold over the party machinery in the state. Instead, the chief minister lobbied for his unambitious education minister to replace him.8 Rao had no faction backing him. His advocacy of land reforms and socialism—not to mention the fact that he was from Telangana—made him especially attractive to Indira Gandhi.

  Caste was another factor in Narasimha Rao’s favour. Narsa Reddy, the state party president at the time,9 recalls that since southern Brahmins were numerically few, they were seen as on the side of the other politically weak castes. It also helped that the national leadership was run by north Indian Brahmins, Indira Gandhi and Union minister Uma Shankar Dikshit amongst them.

  Another person claimed credit for Rao’s anointment. Lakshmi Kantamma, then a Lok Sabha MP, convinced Rao that she had lobbied for him in Delhi.10

  And so it was that P.V. Narasimha Rao became chief minister of Andhra Pradesh in September 1971. Years later, in 2010, when Congress President Sonia Gandhi faced yet another agitation for a distinct Telangana state, she made an Andhra man chief minister.11 It was a sign that, unlike in 1971, New Delhi had a separate Telangana in mind.

  As chief minister, Narasimha Rao seemed to fulfil the first condition under which he was nominated: he appeared pliant and unassuming. Rao made no effort to promote his own family. In order to appease warring factions of the party, he included twenty-nine MLAs in his Cabinet—the largest in the state’s history until then.12

  Every morning at seven, he would descend from his house on the first floor to greet visitors. His secretary, P.V.R.K. Prasad, remembers the durbar. ‘Ministers could walk in at any time . . . Although people continuously streamed into his chambers, thousands continued to wait o
utside.’13 Rao would never ask someone to leave his office,14 but was also careful to never overtly agree with anyone. Photographs from that period show Narasimha Rao in a perpetual half-smirk, neither fully committed to a smile nor fully to a frown. Narsa Reddy remembers: ‘When you go to meet Narasimha Rao, it is as good as talking to the wall. The wall does not reply, nor does Narasimha Rao.’15

  To push Rao into taking decisions, his secretary, Prasad, had rehearsed an act. Whenever the chief minister had an open file in front of him, Prasad would chime in and reassure Rao about the contents of the file. ‘Even after arriving at a decision, he vacillates wondering whether he has overlooked something in the process. If someone he trusts backs him at that exact moment, he takes the decision promptly.’16

  As a chief minister without a base of his own, Narasimha Rao needed guides and informants. He was learning that even if he eschewed factions, he needed his own channels of information. This became even more necessary after guru Ramananda Tirtha died in January 1973, a few months after his protégé reached the position he never could. The chief minister was inconsolable, and ordered a state funeral, proclaiming, ‘I owe everything to him.’17 Rao was in need of new eyes and ears.

  These were provided by Lakshmi Kantamma. Just before he was made chief minister, Narasimha Rao’s wife had passed away, ailing from diabetes and blood pressure; overwork too had taken its toll.18 They had been married for around forty years, during which Satyamma had uncomplainingly taken care of the family land and children, while her husband pursued his own ambitions. Rao was filled with guilt and swore to end his relationship with Lakshmi. When the bureaucrat B.P.R. Vithal paid him a condolence visit that morning, he was told, ‘I will be a changed man.’19

  Rao did not change, and, as chief minister, had lunch with Lakshmi on most days. Secretary Prasad remembers that Rao would eat only after she joined him, sometimes waiting long until she appeared.20 Narasimha Rao may have been an unfaithful husband but he was no hypocrite. He made no attempt to hide his relationship with Lakshmi, and the daily political gossip she brought was valuable. But their intimacy tarred his reputation. M. Narayan Reddy, who was secretary of the Congress Legislative Party, remembers going to the chief minister’s office one day. ‘There were 150 visitors waiting outside his office. Also the film star N.T. Rama Rao, who had come to give his son’s marriage invitation to the chief minister. He was made to wait for one hour, and [he] went off to sleep. I went inside the CM’s chamber to see what was taking so long, and found Narasimha Rao listening to Lakshmi Kantamma talk. It was a henpecked atmosphere. I told her, with folded hands, “Kindly allow people to see PV gaaru.” She got up and went away.’21

  Another source of information and advice for chief minister Narasimha Rao was Chandraswami, a man unusual even among the astrologers and soothsayers who hovered around Indian politicians. Born as Nemi Chand Jain, Chandraswami was from Hyderabad and knew many Andhra politicians. Rotund, with long hair and a beard hanging below eyes that never left you, Chandraswami radiated an unsettling air. Even in 2015, living in a baroque, wood-engraved mansion in the heart of Delhi, he spoke little, but exuded an aura which the secular call ‘charisma’, and the religious describe as ‘presence’.22

  Now a spent force fighting off allegations of corruption and human sacrifice, in the early 1970s he was a man on the rise. He claimed to have spent five years meditating in the jungles of Bihar, a penance that gave him mystical powers.23 He would seduce politicians with predictions, then provide them with contacts ranging from Britain’s Margaret Thatcher to the Saudi arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi. Aware of the insecurities of the powerful, Chandraswami would size up a politician or bureaucrat within five minutes of conversation, then connect him with someone whom the person respected in his own world—a senior party leader or bureaucrat. The effect was other-worldly as well as of this earth.

  Narasimha Rao met him for the first time in 1971 when Chandraswami was performing a yagna in the temple town of Tirupati.24 With his collection of contacts in Delhi and abroad, Chandraswami expanded the horizon of the provincial Narasimha Rao. Since many Andhra politicians were his devotees, Chandraswami kept the chief minister informed of the goings-on in his state. And the godman’s access to Indira Gandhi and her coterie in Delhi gave Narasimha Rao, anxious to please his political patron, an alternative line of communication.

  Rao’s reliance on Lakshmi Kantamma and Chandraswami would set a pattern that would continue into his time as prime minister. For a leader to judge his own relative strength and weakness at any given point, he requires a network of spies and informants. He always needs extra pairs of ears.

  While Rao was mostly conciliatory as chief minister, he was coming to terms with a contradiction in Indira Gandhi’s concept of a ‘nominated’ chief minister. Being politically weak was the reason he was chosen, but as chief minister he was expected to be strong in implementing Indira’s orders. It was a paradox that would bedevil Manmohan Singh in 2004. He was selected by Sonia Gandhi as prime minister precisely because he lacked any power of his own. But executing her will required him to be powerful. This inconsistency would similarly trouble Narasimha Rao in 1991. He was chosen as prime minister because he was submissive, while the circumstances that besieged India at the time required him to take initiative. Prime minister Narasimha Rao would resolve the contradiction by transforming India’s economic and foreign policies, all the while pretending to be doing little. But this Narasimha Rao, the young chief minister, had much to learn about the politics of reform.

  This Rao felt that he had to justify Indira’s faith in him by carrying out her policies on land reform, and he would do whatever it took to achieve that end. To implement these policies, Rao threw caution and subtlety—the very qualities that made him chief minister—to the wind. The introvert gave way to the extrovert, the vacillating Hamlet gave way to the charged Don Quixote. Rao became, in his own words, a ‘wild boar’.25

  Gone were his customary silences or indecisions. On land reform, his colleagues recall, ‘Rao had a sudden sense of importance at becoming chief minister at a young age.’26 His party was in control of the state, and the few opposition ‘communist members here and there were welcoming his reforms’.27 The national leadership was backing him, and land reforms were sure to win votes. There was nothing to rein in the wild boar.

  So, on becoming chief minister, Narasimha Rao, used his drafting skills to craft legislation that limited land ownership to a ‘ceiling’ of between thirty and fifty-four acres for dry land, and between twelve and twenty-seven acres for wetland.28 Land in excess of the ceiling would be taken over by the government and distributed to the landless. The ceiling was uncomfortably low, given that Rao himself owned 1200 acres, and other landlords—including his Cabinet colleagues—had many times more. More dangerous still, in the eyes of the landlords, was that Rao plugged the loopholes in the law.

  Congressman M. Narayan Reddy, who was assisting Rao at the time, remembers: ‘After the announcement of the land ceiling, people started manipulating records. When we used to visit villages, Rao said, “Patwaris and revenue officers are colluding with the landlords.”’29 Rao worked to plug these loopholes, and after introducing a new law in the state legislature, he resorted to theatre. He got up from his seat in the assembly, and went to the gate. ‘All those in favour of land reform can stay,’ he bellowed. ‘The rest can leave.’30

  Narasimha Rao’s actions angered landlords and politicians, who bided their time. A colleague remembers that Rao’s enemies extended to his own Cabinet. ‘Because of Mrs. Indira Gandhi, those opposed were silent in the cabinet, they never opposed violently.’31 But the tide was turning. Even Brahmananda Reddy, the man who had made Rao chief minister, now wanted him replaced.32 Prime minister Narasimha Rao, wiser and older, would have paused. That reformer would never have taken on too many enemies at the same time. But chief minister Rao mistook silence for submission. He pushed on.

  In the early years of the state, Brahmins had direct
ed Congress politics until they were displaced by politicians from the more numerous Reddy caste. Now the Brahmin Narasimha Rao was ushering in the next revolution. He removed Reddys and other forward castes from his Cabinet, increasing the percentage of scheduled castes, backward castes and minorities from twenty-five to forty.33 He was also the first chief minister of Andhra Pradesh to induct a tribal into his Cabinet.34 The elite were not just losing land, their political tentacles were also being slashed.

  To add salt to their wounds, Rao gave incendiary speeches. In his home district of Karimnagar, he told the young people who were listening: ‘You are to indicate who is saving the lands . . . pass on information about law breakers.’35 It was understood as a call for vigilante justice. In May 1972, Rao swore that he would implement land reforms ‘whatever be the consequences’.36 The subtext of violence was present in another speech. Narsa Reddy remembers the fiery chief minister declaring: ‘All these big landlords have grown like babul trees under which no other tree can grow. I want to pluck out all these big trees to make way for the smaller trees to grow.’37

  Intemperate speeches, consciously evoking caste, and provoking many enemies at the same time—this was not the quiet prime minister that New Delhi would know two decades later. But Narasimha Rao the chief minister was pouring kerosene all over himself. All that was needed was a matchstick.

  Ignition came in the form of a Supreme Court judgment on 3 October 1972.38 The question concerned the validity of mulki rules, a Nizam-era law that allowed for quotas in government jobs for those from the Telangana region. State employment being one of the few ladders for social mobility, these mulki rules were unpopular in the other regions of Andhra Pradesh. Rao was returning from one of his many Delhi visits when the court delivered the judgment declaring mulki rules to be valid. Ambushed by the press, Rao brusquely replied that the court ruling ‘will bring finality to this matter’,39 and he would implement the judgment. His words were spun to imply that a Telangana chief minister was favouring his own region. Street protests followed.