India's Tipping Point

Book excerpt: In September of 2022, India's GDP crossed that of Britain to make it the world's fifth largest economy. For a country that had been struggling with slow growth for decades, it was a significant moment. The tipping point-that moment when a process of change is initiated which will transform how we think, behave or live-came in the summer of 1991 under the leadership of someone considered the person least likely to launch such a change. The government of P.V. Narasimha Rao, who had just turned 70, announced a series of measures that have today placed India among the top economies. This was not all. The five years of his prime-ministership, from 1991 to 1996, were marked by several other changes whose impact continues to be felt. Alongside devastating events like the Babri Masjid demolition and tackling bitter politics in a divided Congress party. S. Narendra was a close associate through this period and sheds light on many key events and the internecine rivalries and politics that Rao had to counter to be able to function. He was a cog in the wheel of bigger things but perfectly placed to see what happened in the grey area between policy-making, administration and politics, and to explain, at least in part, the actions of the man at the centre of it all. This is a first-hand, indispensable account of history in the making.