P V Narasimha Rao

P V Narasimha Rao

Full name : P V (Pamulaparthi Veenkata) Narasimha Rao

Pamulaparthi Venkata Narasimha Rao (28 June 1921 – 23 December 2004) was the 12th Prime Minister of the Republic of India.He led one of the most important administrations in India’s modern history, overseeing a major economic transformation and several incidents affecting national security.Rao accelerated the dismantling of the license raj, work that originally initiated under the government of Rajiv Gandhi. Rao, also called the “Father of Indian Economic Reforms,” is best remembered for launching India’s free market reforms that rescued the almost bankrupt nation from economic collapse.He was also commonly referred to as the Chanakya of modern India for his ability to steer tough economic and political legislation through the parliament at a time when he headed a minority government.

Rao’s term as Prime Minister was an eventful one in India’s history. Besides marking a paradigm shift from the socialist economy propagated by Nehru to a market driven one, his years as Prime Minister also saw the emergence of the Bharatiya Janata Party, a major right-wing party, as an alternative to the Indian National Congress which had been governing India for most of its post-independence history. Rao’s term also saw the destruction of the Babri Mosque in Ayodhya which triggered one of the worst Hindu-Muslim riots in the country since its independence.

Rao’s later life was marked by political isolation due to his association with corruption charges. Rao was acquitted on all charges prior to his death in 2004 of a heart attack in New Delhi. He was cremated in Hyderabad.

Early life

PV’s father was P. V. Ranga Rao. He belonged to a wealthy Telugu Niyogi Brahmin family from a village called Vangara (pedda), Bheema Devara pally mandal in the Karimnagar district of Andhra Pradesh, India.

Narasimha Rao was popularly known as PV. PV studied at Fergusson College and at the Universities of Mumbai and Nagpur where he obtained Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in law.[9][10] He was a polyglot and could speak 13 languages including Urdu, Marathi, Kannada, Hindi, Telugu and Oriya 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, PV edited a Telugu weekly magazine called Kakatiya Patrika from 1948 to 1955.

Narasimha Rao has three sons and five daughters. His eldest son P. V. Rangarao was as an education minister in Kotla Vijaya Bhaskar Reddy cabinet and MLA from HanmaKonda Assembly Constituency for two terms. His second son P. V. Rajeshwar Rao was a Member of Parliament from Secunderabad Lok Sabha Constituency.

Political career

Early career
Narasimha 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. Narasimha Rao served brief stints in the Andhra Pradesh cabinet (1962–1971) and as Chief minister of the state of Andhra Pradesh (1971–1973).

Path to Prime Ministership

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 by-election in Nandyal to join the parliament. N.T.Rama Rao (then leader of the Chief Opposition party of Telugu Desam) did not want to put a contestant against Rao, because he was the First Prime Minister of India from Andhra Pradesh, and NTR did not want to create an obstacle on his path. By that, Rao won from Nandyal with a victory margin of a record 5 lakh (500,000) 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.

Achievements
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.

Rao, 83, was admitted to AIIMS after he complained of breathlessness on December 9.

P V Narasimha Rao

According to former Youth Congress president Maninderjit Singh Bitta, who was at his bedside, Rao slept peacefully on Wednesday night.

In the morning he developed certain complications and at noon, he had a cardiac arrest. At 1440 IST, doctors declared him dead.

One of his sons, Prabhakar Rao, was also at his bedside.

Later in the day the body was brought to 9, Motilal Marg, where Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress president Sonia Gandhi were expected to arrive.

The government announced a 7-day national mourning for the departed leader.

After being admitted to the hospital, Rao had recovered after virtually sinking into a coma and had talked to visitors, including President A P J Abdul Kalam.

He had suffered a cardiac arrest after his admission to the hospital.