BackBook Review: To the Brink and Back
Jairam Ramesh resists the temptation to make 1991 the benchmark for economic reforms in India
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In less than a year from now, India will record the 25th anniversary of the moment when it changed gears on economic reforms, launching the country into an unprecedented growth phase. It would only be natural then for a raft of books to hit the stands over the coming year.
In that sense, Jairam Ramesh, technocrat turned Congress politician, is first off the block; the release of his book, To The Brink And Back: India’s 1991 Story, has formally kicked off the celebrations. Ramesh’s claim to inking the book is the ringside view that he enjoyed while working in the Prime Minister’s office (PMO) for the first 90 days or so of the Narasimha Rao government (before he was unceremoniously ejected and placed in the Planning Commission, the sinecure for those out of favour).
For Ramesh, the book carries with it a political risk. When he served under Rao, he was a technocrat (inducted along with Rakesh Mohan and Arvind Virmani by Manmohan Singh in the Planning Commission in 1986), but he has since formally joined the Congress—something that might be expected to define the contours of his literary freedom. Considering that Rao, one of the most successful Congress prime ministers, is considered a pariah within the party, the glowing tributes to him in the book will not endear Ramesh to a party run like a mom-and-pop store. It would be safe to predict that this book must be triggering a round of palace intrigue within the Gandhis’ inner circle.
At the same time, with this book, Ramesh has staked the Congress party’s claim to the authorship of economic reforms; I am not sure how this will go down with a leadership that is increasingly adopting a left-of-centre stance. For that matter, Ramesh himself may find it difficult to reconcile his present ideological predilections—especially on the land acquisition legislation—with his pro-market stance in 1991.
To Ramesh’s credit, he has not yielded to the temptation to make 1991 the benchmark for economic reforms. Not only does he draw the reader’s attention to the preceding period, he specifically cites instances to make the point that the unprecedented acceleration in reforms witnessed in 1991 was the outcome of some considerable heavy lifting earlier, including during the prime ministerial tenure of the late Rajiv Gandhi.
To quote Ramesh, “To be sure, there had been earlier attempts to reform. The first two years of Rajiv Gandhi’s tenure (1985-87) as prime minister saw a flurry of initiatives to give greater incentives to the private sector to expand." He adds, “Earlier, Indira Gandhi herself had cautiously begun the process of giving a new direction to regulation when she set up the Economic Administration Reforms Commission under the chairmanship of L.K. Jha; a committee to examine the principles of a possible shift away from physical to financial control under the chairmanship of M. Narasimham; and a committee for restructuring the public sector with Dr Arjun Sengupta as its head. India’s first major reform that partially decontrolled the cement industry took place in 1982. Earlier, in May 1979, the Committee on Controls and Subsidies set up by Morarji Desai government under the chairmanship of Vadilal Dagli submitted its report."
And later, while alluding to Rao as he started staking claim to the authorship of the reforms blitzkrieg, Ramesh writes, “I did not begrudge him that one bit, but felt the pre-1991 roots of the post-1991 successes were not being given adequate credit. I wrote about this in 1994 in Business Standard, only to invite rebuke from the establishment and from some neo-converts" (I can empathize with Ramesh here—like him, I have, against popular perception, including within Mint, continuously argued that the Indian economic reforms story is much older than 1991, and that its progress is a tribute to continuity with change).
The book is, therefore, honest in the contextualization of what was indeed a pivotal moment in India’s modern economic history. Add to it uncomplicated writing and the excellent structuring of chapters. And, of course, at the risk of reading like a term paper, Ramesh has liberally used footnotes (actually a very smart trick because it frees up the narrative and keeps the reader glued to the fascinating plot as it unfolds) throughout the book, not to speak of the detailed annexures of some historical documents. To his credit, Ramesh has packed the book very tightly, restricting it to his period in the PMO.
In short, the book is a must-read. Even those who steer clear of non-fiction, especially if it’s related to the economy, should go for it. If nothing else, it will help them understand why both the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party, despite their posturing, are actually on the same page on economic reforms—a critical consensus that now needs to be operationalized.
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