P. V. Narasimha Rao

Biography

Pamulaparthi Venkata Narasimha Rao was born in 1921 in a village in present-day Telangana, then part of Hyderabad State, and at the age of three was adopted by another family. He studied at Osmania University, at Hislop College in Nagpur and at Fergusson College in Pune, and took part in the movement against the Nizam's rule. In the 1940s he co-edited a Telugu weekly, and he was known as a polyglot and man of letters.

A Congress member after independence, he sat in the Andhra Pradesh assembly from 1957 to 1977, held state ministries and was chief minister from 1971 to 1973. Moving to national politics, he served under Indira and Rajiv Gandhi as minister of external affairs, home affairs and defence.

He was on the point of retiring in 1991 when Rajiv Gandhi's assassination made him Congress president. After the 1991 election he formed a minority government as India's first prime minister from the south. Facing a balance-of-payments crisis, he appointed Manmohan Singh finance minister and opened the economy through deregulation, trade reform and foreign investment. His government also advanced the nuclear and missile programmes, but was criticised for failing to prevent the 1992 demolition of the Babri Masjid.

Congress lost the 1996 election. Rao then faced several corruption cases, including a conviction over bribes in a 1993 confidence vote that was overturned on appeal; he was cleared of all charges before his death in 2004. He was posthumously awarded the Bharat Ratna in 2024.