An embarrassed Congress, finally wakes up to former PM Rao’s legacy

After nearly a month of Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao launching his government’s year-long celebrations to mark the birth centenary of former prime minister PV Narasimha Rao, the Congress last week woke up to the legacy of the life-long Congressman. The event kicked off with another former PM Manmohan Singh remembering how 29 years ago, he presented the historic union budget which ushered in the era of globalisation and liberalisation in India.

Congress president Sonia Gandhi in her message, called Rao “scholarly, erudite and bold”. Her son, Rahul Gandhi also hailed the former PM for his contributions to economic reforms.

Meanwhile, Singh in his messaged added, “Rao Ji can truly be called the father of Economic Reforms in India...On the foreign affairs front, he made efforts to improve the relationship with our neighbours including China. India signed the South Asian Preferential Trade Agreement along with the SAARC countries.”

“Then the ‘Look East Policy’ was also his brainchild to link India with East and South-East Asian countries...That was a difficult era in politics. Endowed with a cool temperament and deep political prowess Narasimha Rao ji was always open to debates and discussion. He always tried to take the opposition into confidence. To cite a few examples, he had deputed Shri Atal Bihar Vajpayee Ji as the leader of the Indian delegation to the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva to discuss Pakistan-sponsored resolution to censure India on its record of human rights in Jammu & Kashmir, which was successfully thwarted. He had also nominated Shri Subramaniam Swamy as Chairman of the Commission on Labour Standards and International Trade, with a Cabinet-rank.”

“Narasimha Rao Ji left behind an unmatched legacy of being a linguist, well versed in 10 Indian and four foreign languages and a scholar. He was one of the first converts to new technology by not only becoming adept with using a computer but also became proficient with programming.”

-TIN Bureau