Free To the Brink and Back: India’s 1991 Story by Jairam Ramesh Page B

generally regarded as ‘left-of-centre’ and therefore, when I read the interview, that too in a magazine that was decidedly pro-Left, I thought it was hugely significant to bring it to the prime minister’s notice right away.
    The prime minister asked for a couple of copies of the Raj interview, which I sent. I asked him what he had thought of it. He replied that if ‘Raj has given us a certificate it means a lot’.
    Ten years later, I recounted this episode whenManmohan Singh and I dined withK.N. Raj and his family in Thiruvananthapuram. K.N. Raj recalled that once, in the late 1970s or early 1980s, Narasimha Rao had showed up at theCentre for Development Studies—that Raj had established in Kerala’s capital—just to have a conversation. He also recalled that word had been sent to him after the interview had appeared that the prime minister had appreciated it.
    My own impression is that while Narasimha Rao was being buffeted by criticism from all sides, he took solace in the Raj interview and the encomiums paid to the man he had selected as finance minister.
    I also know how much the finance minister appreciated the public display of support by a legendary figure, at a time when he was under sustained attack in Parliament and outside by his friends—including S.K. Goyal,Chandra Shekhar’s longstanding economic alter ego, who had once enthusiastically backed Manmohan Singh’s appointment as economic adviser to the prime minister in November 1990.

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TheIndustrial Policy Reforms Drama
    s soon as I joined the PMO,A.N. Verma calledSuresh Mathur, 55 Rakesh Mohan 56 and me for a discussion. He told us that this was a golden opportunity to get something done in the space of industrial policy reforms since the prime minister had deliberately kept theindustry portfolio to himself. I knew that both Mohan andVerma had laboured hard to bring about changes in industrial policy whenV.P. Singh had been prime minister and Ajit Singh had been in the Ministry of Industry. But those attempts had been thwarted because of opposition from within the cabinet.
    Thereafter,Mathur, Mohan and I met a couple of times. The first draft was prepared by Mohan. By about 7 July 1991 we had finalized what we wanted to sell to the prime minister. I had kept the finance minister in the loop at every stage. In fact, at one point of time, when we were discussing reforms to theanti-monopoly legislation (popularly known as theMonopolies and Restrictive Trade Practices [MRTP] Act), I told him that the minister of state for law, justice and company affairs,Rangarajan Kumaramangalam, or Ranga as we called him, was not terribly happy with what we were suggesting— namely, the plain and simple abolition of clearances for industry under an Act that had been made in 1969 when there was concern that licensing had, somewhat paradoxically, led to the concentration of economic power. I had been trying to convince Ranga of the need to be radical regarding MRTP and not just remain incremental. I knew that if he would not get convinced, there was little chance of his senior minister, the old warhorse,Vijaya Bhaskara Reddy, coming on board for this crucial reform measure.
    The finance minister then did something that stumped me momentarily. He called Ranga and me to his room and became very emotional. He told his young colleague how he had worked with his father—the redoubtable Communist leaderMohan Kumaramangalam, who later joinedIndira Gandhi’s cabinet—and how pragmatic and open to new ideas his ‘good friend Mohan was’. For about ten minutes, Singh reminisced about Ranga’s father and told him to consider what he would have done at this crucial juncture of India’s history. Ranga came out of the finance minister’s chamber telling me, ‘
Yaar, Sardar ne kamaal kar diya
. (Singh has taken me by surprise!)’ Ranga added, ‘Let me work on my old man [Vijaya Bhaskara Reddy] now.’
    After Suresh Mathur,Rakesh Mohan and I had finalized the