Narasimha Rao told Manmohan ‘he would be sacked if things didn’t work out well’
20 Aug 2014 4:58 AM IST
Woken up from his sleep to be informed of the ‘out of the blue’ decision of his appointment as India’s finance minister in 1991, Dr Manmohan Singh was jokingly told by prime minister Narasimha Rao that he would be sacked if ‘things didn’t work out well’.
Singh was asleep when PC Alexander, principal secretary to the prime minister, rang him up frantically to convey Rao’s decision to appoint him as finance minister.
‘The decision was out of the blue’, Singh is quoted as having said by his daughter Daman Singh in her book ‘Strictly Personal: Manmohan and Gursharan’, which covers the years prior to his becoming the prime minister in 2004. The book is based on Daman’s conversations with her parents and hours spent in libraries and archives.
According to Singh, Rao’s most important role was that he allowed the process of liberalisation and opening up to go ahead, and gave it his full support.
Singh says Rao was first a little sceptical about the liberalisation idea and had to be persuaded.
‘I had to persuade him. I think he was a sceptic to begin with, but later on he was convinced that what we were doing was the right thing to do, that there was no other way out. But he wanted to sanctify the middle path — that we should undertake liberalisation but also take care of the marginalised sections, the poor,’ recounts Singh.
‘He also jokingly told me that if things worked well we would all claim credit, and if things didn’t work out well I would be sacked,’ he said.
Singh was asleep when PC Alexander, principal secretary to the prime minister, rang him up frantically to convey Rao’s decision to appoint him as finance minister.
‘The decision was out of the blue’, Singh is quoted as having said by his daughter Daman Singh in her book ‘Strictly Personal: Manmohan and Gursharan’, which covers the years prior to his becoming the prime minister in 2004. The book is based on Daman’s conversations with her parents and hours spent in libraries and archives.
According to Singh, Rao’s most important role was that he allowed the process of liberalisation and opening up to go ahead, and gave it his full support.
Singh says Rao was first a little sceptical about the liberalisation idea and had to be persuaded.
‘I had to persuade him. I think he was a sceptic to begin with, but later on he was convinced that what we were doing was the right thing to do, that there was no other way out. But he wanted to sanctify the middle path — that we should undertake liberalisation but also take care of the marginalised sections, the poor,’ recounts Singh.
‘He also jokingly told me that if things worked well we would all claim credit, and if things didn’t work out well I would be sacked,’ he said.
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