Death of a Prime Minister
In the last month of the year, the man who created 21st century India died. Although he was prime minister in the 90s, he laid the foundation of India resurgent, India shining and all that we hear about and are proud of now.
And look how we are treating him now? Amongst the many prime ministers we have had - the man with the shortest term got cremated in the national capital, and the man with the longest, deservedly so, was cremated in the capital. But the man who made the most difference beside of course Pt Nehru to the way we looked at the future is shunted out to a provincial capital. My guess is that the next PM to die - VP Singh in all probability who presided over the country in a disastrous 11 month term whose consequences have probably taken away 1% point from our GDP growth year on year, will probably find himself cremated along the banks of the Yamuna with a nice memorial to go with it.
Well you might say that here I am seeing demons where none exist. Being petty, about a dead man's memory. I don't think so. The only other prime minsiter to be cremated outside Delhi was the first PM from the south of the Vindhyas. The second one treated that way is, is the second PM from the south of the Vindhyas. Incidentally these are the only two with nothing to do with the Hindi heartland or with the family and hence they can be shunted to provincial capitals (Gandhinagar and Hyderabad) comfortably.
Why is it so that some Prime Ministers are more equal than the others? I think politically India exists at three levels - at the top is the Family, then comes the Hindi heartland and at the foot of the table is the rest of the country. This is also borne out the by the disproportionate attention these parts of the country get. Its just that with real estate availability at the Yamuna ghat shrinking rapidly, place needs to be allocated to people there according to the above mentioned criteria. So non Prime Ministers like Babu Jagjivan Ram get cremated in Delhi, he was from Bihar; 3 monthers like Charan Singh get a ghat for themselves, he was a UP wala; Rajiv Gandhi was brought down to Delhi to be cremated in a very inappropriately titled Vir Bhoomi; even Sanjay Gandhi, not a prime minister and definitely an extra constitutional autocrat find places there. In about 50-70 years we might find Sonia Gandhi there as well without being PM.
Narasimha Rao was a wronged man. Agreed he lead the Congress to its worst performance in 1996. But the current helmsperson of the party has lead it to a worse performance in 2004, and is still hailed as a victorious leader. He was shunted out of the party and then out of the public consciousness - first because of criminal charges and when that stopped being a disqualification, because of his not so subservient past relationship with the Empress at 10 Janpath.
Over the last five years there has been a steady move to divest him from his legacy of economic reforms as well. When the BJP appropriated economic reforms, the Congress gave that up because it was Narasimha Rao's doing and not that of the family. But since reforms were something which had built for itself a constituency, that legacy was transferred from Narasimha Rao to the latest of the family retainers - Manmohan Singh. Its fashionable now to say it was Manmohan who reformed India. That may be about as correct as saying that it was Marshall Ferdinand Foch and not George Clemenceau who led France to victory in the First World War. An apolitical technocratic Finance Minister would have got as far as the French general did, without the firm support of his political master.
Perhaps the only good thing about his death is that he died a vindicated man. He was acquitted of all charges in court. His discovery was the PM of India. India booms and shines and is the darling of the western investor. And as he predicted the BJP on december 6, 1992 did destroy its emotive issue in chief, something which is haunting them now.
Although our countrymen and his partymen may not have treated him well, Narasimha Rao would be judged favourably by history.
And look how we are treating him now? Amongst the many prime ministers we have had - the man with the shortest term got cremated in the national capital, and the man with the longest, deservedly so, was cremated in the capital. But the man who made the most difference beside of course Pt Nehru to the way we looked at the future is shunted out to a provincial capital. My guess is that the next PM to die - VP Singh in all probability who presided over the country in a disastrous 11 month term whose consequences have probably taken away 1% point from our GDP growth year on year, will probably find himself cremated along the banks of the Yamuna with a nice memorial to go with it.
Well you might say that here I am seeing demons where none exist. Being petty, about a dead man's memory. I don't think so. The only other prime minsiter to be cremated outside Delhi was the first PM from the south of the Vindhyas. The second one treated that way is, is the second PM from the south of the Vindhyas. Incidentally these are the only two with nothing to do with the Hindi heartland or with the family and hence they can be shunted to provincial capitals (Gandhinagar and Hyderabad) comfortably.
Why is it so that some Prime Ministers are more equal than the others? I think politically India exists at three levels - at the top is the Family, then comes the Hindi heartland and at the foot of the table is the rest of the country. This is also borne out the by the disproportionate attention these parts of the country get. Its just that with real estate availability at the Yamuna ghat shrinking rapidly, place needs to be allocated to people there according to the above mentioned criteria. So non Prime Ministers like Babu Jagjivan Ram get cremated in Delhi, he was from Bihar; 3 monthers like Charan Singh get a ghat for themselves, he was a UP wala; Rajiv Gandhi was brought down to Delhi to be cremated in a very inappropriately titled Vir Bhoomi; even Sanjay Gandhi, not a prime minister and definitely an extra constitutional autocrat find places there. In about 50-70 years we might find Sonia Gandhi there as well without being PM.
Narasimha Rao was a wronged man. Agreed he lead the Congress to its worst performance in 1996. But the current helmsperson of the party has lead it to a worse performance in 2004, and is still hailed as a victorious leader. He was shunted out of the party and then out of the public consciousness - first because of criminal charges and when that stopped being a disqualification, because of his not so subservient past relationship with the Empress at 10 Janpath.
Over the last five years there has been a steady move to divest him from his legacy of economic reforms as well. When the BJP appropriated economic reforms, the Congress gave that up because it was Narasimha Rao's doing and not that of the family. But since reforms were something which had built for itself a constituency, that legacy was transferred from Narasimha Rao to the latest of the family retainers - Manmohan Singh. Its fashionable now to say it was Manmohan who reformed India. That may be about as correct as saying that it was Marshall Ferdinand Foch and not George Clemenceau who led France to victory in the First World War. An apolitical technocratic Finance Minister would have got as far as the French general did, without the firm support of his political master.
Perhaps the only good thing about his death is that he died a vindicated man. He was acquitted of all charges in court. His discovery was the PM of India. India booms and shines and is the darling of the western investor. And as he predicted the BJP on december 6, 1992 did destroy its emotive issue in chief, something which is haunting them now.
Although our countrymen and his partymen may not have treated him well, Narasimha Rao would be judged favourably by history.
posted by Dinkar at 4:01 PM
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