P. V. Narasimha Rao

Narasimha Rao was born on 28 June 1921 at Karimnagar, the son of P. Ranga Rao. According to the Prime Minister’s Office, he studied at Osmania University in Hyderabad, Bombay University and Nagpur University. He was an agriculturist and an advocate before entering politics. He was a widower and the father of three sons and five daughters. His interests included Indian philosophy and culture, languages, fiction and poetry, and he wrote in Telugu and Hindi.

Rao was a member of the Andhra Pradesh Legislative Assembly from 1957 to 1977. In the state government he held the portfolios of Law and Information from 1962 to 1964, Law and Endowments from 1964 to 1967, Health and Medicine in 1967, and Education from 1968 to 1971. He was Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh from 1971 to 1973 and chaired the Telugu Academy from 1968 to 1974. He was General Secretary of the All India Congress Committee in 1975–76.

Rao was a member of the Lok Sabha from 1977 to 1984 and was elected to the Eighth Lok Sabha from Ramtek in December 1984. He chaired the Public Accounts Committee in 1978–79. He was Minister of External Affairs from 14 January 1980 to 18 July 1984, a period in which he chaired meetings of the Non-Aligned Movement’s foreign ministers and led Indian delegations to international economic conferences. He was Minister of Home Affairs from 19 July 1984, took additional charge of Planning on 5 November 1984, was Minister of Defence from 31 December 1984 to 25 September 1985, and then became Minister of Human Resource Development.

After Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination during the 1991 general election campaign, Rao became Congress president. The party won 244 seats, short of a majority, and Rao took office as Prime Minister on 21 June 1991 at the head of a minority government that relied on outside support. He appointed Manmohan Singh as Finance Minister, and the budget presented on 24 July 1991 is commonly cited as the start of economic liberalisation, in the context of a severe foreign exchange shortage. Rao’s term ended on 16 May 1996 after the Congress lost the general election.

Rao published translations between Telugu, Hindi and Marathi, including a Hindi translation of Viswanatha Satyanarayana’s Telugu novel Veyi Padagalu. He was admitted to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in Delhi on 8 December 2004 and died on 23 December 2004, aged 83. On 9 February 2024 the government announced the Bharat Ratna for him, and President Droupadi Murmu conferred it posthumously at Rashtrapati Bhavan on 30 March 2024.