Title: 1991: How P. V. Narasimha Rao Made History
Author: Sanjaya Baru
Published: 2016
Genre: History, Politics
BookMarks
A book about a ringside viewer’s account of the vents of 1991. Those were certainly weird times as shown in the following extract, “the Mandal agitation for expanding the scope of reservations, the Mandir agitation aimed at building a temple for Lord Rama in Ayodhya, the insurgency in the Northeastern region and in Punjab, the unrest in Kashmir, the unease in Tamil Nadu following the aborted Indian attempt to help Sri Lanka eliminate the Tamil Tigers and, above all, the balance of payments crisis, with the lingering fear of an external default”.
The book gives an account of how the Indian governments (there were two of them) of the year navigated all these crises and successfully moved the country towards economic liberalization. The initial account is quite interesting as it explains how the crisis built up and how the economic and political leadership handled it.
However, somehow the book manages to lose steam as the narrative moves forward. In fact later bits seem disjointed – instead of how the crisis was handled, the book goes into the legacy of PM Narasimha Rao. And somehow gets muddled up in its conclusion.
I liked the Annexure which gives verbatim the PM’s speech at Tirupati session of Congress. The speech covers nearly a quarter of the book! Somehow feel this speech alongwith historical context and opinions would have made a better narrative.
Previously on BookMarks: Everyone Has A Story
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