"He's a hero that Gotham deserves, but not the one it needs right now. So, we will hunt him. Because he can take it."
A resemblance, however hyped and uncanny, on Batman from the film 'The Dark Knight' keeps coming to my mind as I read about India's former Prime minister, PV Narasimha Rao in Prof. Vinay Sitapati's 'Half-Lion - How PV Narasimha Rao transformed India'.
Time and again, I self-checked rather guiltily, whether I succumbed to the traps of Caste and Region in admiring a wily politician, genius and polyglot, of whose paradoxical life - I never understood beyond the basic sketch and that too, first in my home, after his passing away in 2004. Reading the Half-Lion, thus, out of fascination was a great experience in knowing about perhaps India's Greatest Prime Minister, as yet, given the practical constraints he faced.
Dealing judiciously with various events (Liberalization, Babri Masjid, Repeated No Confidence Motions, Nuclear Bomb, Relations with Nehru-Gandhi family), the book vividly describes Rao (who famously 'suffered with lack of ambition') surviving and thriving full term as a Prime Minister,despite a plethora of problems. How this Monk turned Monarch was responsible for a great deal of change in the garb of continuity, reacting as 'Lion/Fox/Mouse' a la Chanakya, Machiavelli is an interesting read.
He had his flaws, and some of his decisions did come to haunt him, but unlike many other transformational leaders like Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, Deng Xiaoping, he did not had to face crippling odds. Salman Khurshid laments, 'Rao is remembered for so much that went wrong, and for nothing that went right', but as Natwar Singh rightly pointed, 'Vinay Sitapati has resurrected Rao'.
Today India is a nuclear power and an economic heavyweight, miles away from an India that was deficit-financing driven and politically unstable in 1991. Thus, the legacy of the enigmatic Half-Lion lives on!
Book - HalfLion - How PV Narasimha Rao transformed India by Vinay Sitapati
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