Brief Overview of Indian Political History — Part 3: Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi Years (1984–1991)
CITIZEN ZERO PUBLIC CORRESPONDENCE 2023.01.26: E-mail Notes to Mrs. Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, The General-Secretary of Indian National Congress Party.
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Editorial Note: These Citizen Zero e-mail correspondences below were exchanged with the current General-Secretary of Indian National Congress, Shri. Priyanka Gandhi Vadra in the year 2023. On the ocassion of India's 74th Republic Day on the 26th January, they are being published here on the substack platform for free public-domain access. Mera Bharath Mahan! Jai Hind! Vande Mataram! [Part 4 of Note to General-Secretary of INC]
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<20230127> Being born in the 1980s, the earliest memory in me of bearing witness to the political landscape of India, and beyond, begins in the 1990s from the daily ordinary facts of existence, among probably, in retrieving the morning newspaper and turning straight to the sports-pages to analyze the details of the cricket scorecard of the Indian team's performance in some foreign tournament, or the Saturday supplement of 'The Young World' for children my mother would leaf out for me to read, or when our entire extended family would gather in our grandparent's house on Friday nights to watch the exciting news show called 'The World This Week' broadcasted on one of the only two national channels (Doordarshan) on the only television set in our common home, and on Sunday mornings gathering together again, with our grandmother serving us all hot dosas out of the kitchen, and we were all there to watch the 100-episode series of Ramayana and Mahabharata, (seeing as that might count as some mytho-political landscape of our motherland from pre-historic millennia), that among these regular occurences it is hard to forget the shock and sorrow that struck us all, to the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty, to India as a nation, and to our entire grandparent's family as Congress-loyalists at the time, from the news of the devastating tragedy of the assassination of Shri. Rajiv Gandhi by a couple of Sri Lankan LTTE suicide-bombers during his campaign for re-election in 1990. I remember that morning on reading the papers my mother making frantic phone-calls to her colleagues sharing their anguish and disbelief, especially among one of her best friends' whose husband was an Indian Army officer who had returned from a posting in Sri Lanka, and who I remember had told us at some evening's gathering of what troubles had struck our Indian Soldiers stationed there in those years 1987-89? I remember in the main foyer of my grandfather's house, the only colour-photo of the dignitaries he had met in his own political life, was that of him shaking-hands with this youngest-ever Prime Minister of India then in 1984-85 at a reception party at the Bangalore Airport.
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<20230127> I suppose more than that Mr. Rajiv Gandhi was the son of Madam Indira Gandhi and the grandson of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, our former prime-ministers, I knew very little else of this daring, charismatic young leader, a 'man of the world' and a 'prince among men' who had inspired a bold new vision for India, for a whole generation of young Indians to whom the disillusionment of politics, as something with its hypocrisies and power-politics careerism, had never been properly a 'young man's game', but for whom in many ways, from his internationality and of his short-lived political career, being reminiscent of that American Pres. John F. Kennedy before him, was, indeed, the right man for his time, to lead our nation into the future and into the millennium. Yet, it wasn't to be, and it only leaves us to wonder how the 'Ordinary World' goes about filling up that void.
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<20230128> It might serve a useful reference to the young idealistic ambitious political aspirants thus to take a look back at Shri. Rajiv Gandhi's political career from the point-of-view of the dynamism in the steps he took towards advancing India's Foreign Policy, its Domestic Technology & Defence policies, and whatever other mis-steps and compromises in attempting Social Reform and Party Re-organization.
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<20230128> In many ways the chip of the old block of Mr. Jawaharlal Nehru, Mr. Rajiv Gandhi set about the international stage imbued with the belief that 'India would play a very significant role in the world rather than play no role at all' and not be sidelined to a casual observer in between, and in many ways it appears as though the nations of the world responded positively to our new young Prime Minister then in the mid-1980s.
<20230129> Mr. Rajiv Gandhi will be remembered as one of the foremost international leaders of his era to rally the call for global arms-race de-escalation and nuclear disarmament. It was one of his major missions, and after the first summit meet of the Six-Nation-Five-Continent Initiative, an Action Plan for Nuclear Disarmament was created that PM Rajiv Gandhi had presented in a most memorably speech in 1988 at the United Nations General Assembly where he envisioned a world free of nuclear-weapons by 2010. As early as 1986, PM Rajiv Gandhi met with USSR Pres. Mr. Mikhail Gorbachev, and nearly 8 times thereafter in 5 years, including mutual state visits to Moscow and New Delhi (in which they announced the Delhi Declaration for Disarmament), and not only forged a strong friendship but also found in him a kindred leader to advance the end of the Cold War and foster international disarmament, long before any similar outreach by the USA think-tank. Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi met Pres. Reagan too in 1985 to foster friendlier relations with America while emphasizing the NAM-neutrality of India's position among world nations. <20230202> The two heads of state had then embarked on technology partnerships for agriculture, water-resources, education and research collaboration through the US-India-Fund, and opening up economies for mutual trade and commercial interests. The confidence that PM Rajiv Gandhi inspired in active foreign relations engagement at the time is noteworthy in the call for mediatory participation of India's External Affairs Office by Republic of Vietnam in 1987 to oversee the withdrawal of its forces from its occupation of Cambodia (Kampuchea) (<20230201> that from the Vietnam War onwards, it had had long convoluted history of occupation by North Vietnamese Communists, and USA-backed invasion using South Vietnamese troops and collateral bombings, and a brutal genocidal regime of Khmer Rouge.)
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<20230129> Mr. Rajiv Gandhi was the only Indian Prime Minister in nearly 30 years after PM Jawaharlal Nehru, who went on an official state visit to China in 1988 where he met Premier Deng Hsiao Ping, and likewise with the official state visit to Pakistan in 1989 where he met PM Benazir Bhutto, and that these beginnings had fostered closer and more frequent diplomatic engagement thereafter to improve relations of our nations arriving into the millennium. (In consideration of how strangely few and far between that India and Her neighbours have had of these highly relevant, high-level official visits, the only other instances that comes to mind includes Mr. Narasimha Rao, the polyglot statesman, who had served many years in the Foreign Office, and as Prime Minister is remembered to have made his own speech in Mandarin on the state visit to Beijing. And, in 2000 with PM Vajpayee on an official visit to Pakistan, riding a bus from Srinagar in the State of Jammu and Kashmir to Lahore, and signalling an easing of border relations for common people of both countries.)
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[20230131] On the other hand, it was quite worrisome, when Nepal in 1988 started imposing heavy duties on Indian goods with preference to Chinese goods in addition to obtaining weapons-aid from China, and PM Rajiv Gandhi had responded with an economic blockade till negotiations were achieved that year.
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Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi would also be the first among his compatriots in a long time to come, to assert a pathbreaking forward diplomacy with African Nations over the Indian Ocean. He was a passionate opponent of the Apartheid Regime in South Africa, and had goaded the nations of the Commonwealth to take a united stand against this subhuman racism policy, and to assert their diplomatic pressures, even at the time when the UK under PM Thatcher (and Japan and USA too) had hesitated to enforce any economic sanctions at cost of jeopardizing their own business and military interests in the region. PM Rajiv Gandhi had also created the Action For Resisting Invasions, Colonialism, and Apartheid (AFRICA) Fund at the 1986 Harare NAM Summit, and went on to raise about half-billion dollars by the follow-up 1989 Belgrade NAM Summit, which was used to assist African Nations that was affected by sanctions against trade with South Africa. Whilst also in that 1986 NAM summit, Mr. Rajiv Gandhi had created the Planet Protection Fund to help developing nations access advanced technologies for assisting their environmental protection policies. Additionally, he went on to visit the African nations of Zimbabwe, Zambia, Angola and Tanzania, and extended diplomatic recognition of SWAPO in 1986 in support of independence of Namibia from South Africa's colonization. Furthermore, Mr. Rajiv Gandhi was the only Indian statesmen in 1990, at a time when he was no longer in Office as India's Prime Minister, yet who was personally present for the celebrations at the release of Mr. Nelson Mandela, the South African Civil-Rights Champion and Leader of the formerly banned African National Congress (ANC) Party emerging from his near three decades of imprisonment.
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<20230106> [20230131] While the Indian Army under PM Rajiv Gandhi's authorization had managed to prevent a military-coup in the Maldives in 1989, it is our direct military involvement in Sri Lanka that might be seen as an overbearing mis-step, that involved a presence of about 48,000 of our soldiers forming the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF), and the resulting death of some 1000 of these soldiers. In 1987, when Sri Lankan Pres. Jayawardane requested PM Rajiv Gandhi send in Indian Army troops to force the implementation of a Peace-Accord to disarm the LTTE Tamil separatist group in the Northern & Eastern regions of Sri Lanka in the civil war that had been raging for decades with the majority Sinhalese Government, he could have exercized greater caution and considered other alternatives such as, a more active mediation of the Tamil Nadu government who were handling the brunt of the refugee influx, and who historically had a greater familiarity with communities in Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Southern Africa, etc., or by galvanizing a joint-action by SAARC Nations as when PM Rajiv Gandhi had held its summit-meet in 1985, or eventually through the UN Peacekeeping. Not only was India's direct military involvement unpopular among the Tamils of Sri Lanka, and even among some of the Indians then but also among the Sinhalese Sri Lankans and their Army too (where PM Rajiv Gandhi had escaped an assassination attempt during a guard-of-honour on his visit to Colombo?). Furthermore, PM Rajiv Gandhi may not have sensed the immediacy of the situation in calling for a long-drawn staged withdrawal of Indian troops that would go on to take nearly a year longer than planned from 1987-89.
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<20230128> What happened in Sri Lanka would serve as a 'Cautionary Tale' on the dangers of any unilateral interference of India in a foreign civil strife instead of attempting to build consensus through other kindred nations for co-opting a joint engagement with active diplomacy and planned peacekeeping. Rather it helps to heed from other policies that had been successful, as with 1950s-1960s Indian UN peacekeeping operations and resettlement efforts in Congo, Egypt, Korea, Vietnam, and may have helped in providing our soldiers with relevant experiences in handling global war-theatres than constantly enduring the paralysis of troop build-up at our borders. It would be worthwhile, therefore, to consider how it might have been possible to have mitigated the turmoil that engulfed Sri Lanka in the 1980s through potential joint participation of the SAARC Nations at the time; and, just as likewise worthwhile to imagine, and seeing as it is more relevant now, how it would be possible to resist and prevent any foreign wars or military unrest that may force itself in the SAARC regions (South Asian Association of Regional Co-operation comprising of Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, after its formation under PM Indira Gandhi's leadership in 1983,) and including by extension of regional co-operation among West-Asian and South-East Asian Nations this way, and more importantly in how we go about ensuring a robust economic corridor, as our historic relations over many millennia would indicate the promise of, as when pursued with mutual interest and confidence into the 21st Century.
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<20230106> From the memory I have of receiving computer education starting in junior/primary school itself (in 1988-89 at 1st standard) with weekly programming lessons at our brand new lab introducing LOGO & BASIC at the time, it is well known that during his term as Prime Minister, Shri. Rajiv Gandhi was, indeed an enthusiastic advocate of the growth of Computer Science and Software Industry in India, including incentivizing local hardware parts manufacturing and easing foreign-imports in the telecommunications and electronics technology sector. He endorsed the use of Computer Accounting in government offices against much resistance at the time, and even secured a Supercomputer for Indian Climate-Science & Weather-Prediction purposes from his earlier visit to the United States. It is with credit to the benefit of these government policies that the end of the decade of 1980s witnessed the arrival of the Indian Software Services Industry, pre-eminently with Wipro, Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services, and other companies out of Southern India from Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, and Mumbai too, who into the 21st century, would go on to build a massive worldwide clientele, servicing businesses with affordable digital-data solutions bringing in many tens of billions of dollars to our economy, and creating employment opportunities for hundreds of thousands of Indian graduates, and sparking the revolution of Computers, Electronics & Telecommunications business, industry and education in India.
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<20230130>[20230131] The investment in the Computer Industry was apart from the six 'Technology Missions' set forth by our Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi when he took office, and carried through under the leadership of Mr. Sam Pitroda of Orissa, an American Entrepreneur and founder of C-DoT India (Center for Department of Telematics). These Missions included–
One, the large-scale project to install at least one landline-telephone for every village in India. <20230202> It was under this initiative that led to the creation of the Mahanagar Telecom Network Limited (MTNL) and the pay-phone systems in India, from a count of 2 million to 1.2 billion landlines;
Two, in using geo-thermal satellites to identify ground water reserves and biochemistry purification methods to provide clean drinking water in Indian villages;
Three, basic vaccination/inoculation of all pregnant women and children, including the drive for eradication of Polio;
Four, in raising literacy-rate from an abysmal 40% using television and radio-programs for rural masses, and for starting 'Operation Blackboard' to meet the goals of Universal Basic Education for Children as being guaranteed by the Indian Constitution, and starting Special Residential Schools for incentivizing high-achievement among children of rural poor & migrant families?;
Five, in carrying through with Phase II & Phase III of the very successful 'Operation Flood' or 'White Revolution' of Milk-Cooperatives launced in 1970 under PM Indira Gandhi's administration originally, led by the efforts of Dr. Verghese Kurien, who chaired the National Dairy Development Board (NDDB) from the time of PM Shastri's administration itself, (a project leading to India becoming the Highest Dairy Producer in the world in 1998 and extending this approach Poultry Production leading to India becoming the 3rd highest Egg producer in the world);
Six, in the efforts to bring about an increase and self-sufficiency in Edible Oil Production in India.
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<20230130> [20230131] In parliamentary affairs, the government under PM Rajiv Gandhi enacted Jawahar Rozghar Yojna, a rural employment scheme that guaranteed at least one member of a rural family some kind of livelihood for 50-100 days a year; He mooted the constitutional mandated for the Election Commission of India to conduct regular compulsory elections in the village Panchayat-Raj Systems, introducing 30% reservations for women, after having ascertained its usefulness through his various direct meetings at grassroot level districts and chief ministers in 1986-87; PM Rajiv Gandhi's administration also drafted the 1989 National Perspective Plan for Women, including addressing issues related to women's health and education; PM Rajiv Gandhi went on to enact the Anti-Defection Bill in the 52nd Amendment that specified a requirement of at least one-third of elected-representatives within a party to be able to legally break away and start a new party or join another party; PM Rajiv Gandhi had also fostered a series of peaceful settlements with regards to some issues of ethnic unrest in the States of Punjab, Kashmir, Assam, Tripura, and in conferring Statehood upon Mizoram, Arunachal Pradesh, and Goa during his administration; Furthermore, it was PM Rajiv Gandhi who was responsible for creating the Ministry of Environment, that would go on to frame environmental standards for future developmental projects; Notably, a couple of tragedies had unfolded in PM Rajiv Gandhi's time, one was the infamous 1984 Bhopal Gas Leak which was a man-made result of negligent malfeasance by Union Carbide, a USA Corporation, that had caused deaths of some 2000 Indians and long-term damage to thousands more through neuro-toxification, and where the American Supreme Court had ordered compensatory payments by this company to the victims in India. In the other, what counts as a major disaster-averting famine-relief effort from the failure of 1987 monsoons, where ‘not even a single life was lost’, PM Rajiv Gandhi was able to organize a massive movement of supply of food and water across 11 states affecting about one-fourth of the population in the most timely and responsive manner;
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<20230130> [20230131] Paradoxically though, for a man who advocated international disarmament, Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi was responsible for increasing India's Defence expenditure to one-fifth of the budget at the time, which included increased spending on modernization and indigenous manufacturing of long-range guided-missile technology (Agni), battle-tank (Arjun), and a Light Combat Aircraft (LCA with USA tech.), while the Indian Navy obtained a nuclear-powered submarine from USSR and a British Aircraft-Carrier. But somewhat most prominently for Shri. Rajiv Gandhi, that nearly at the end of this second term as Prime Minister, it was the controversy around the Bofors Arms Deal with the Swedish Gun Manufacturer that would have detrimental effect on his popularity, and go on to cost the Congress party a loss of majority in the following national election in 1989. (That briefly, at the time, it involved the resignation of his Defence Minister VP Singh who had opened an official enquiry regarding payment of percentage commissions by HDW, a German Submarine Manufacturer, while a Swedish Radio-show broke the news that tens of millions of rupees were paid out by Bofors to Congress-party workers and Government officials to secure the contract for sale of its Howitzer Guns, and the Indian news-media had gone a-buzz questioning the possible exchange of moneys between these deals, and stoking the rumours of any personal involvement of Mr. Rajiv Gandhi in these matters, who while publically denying these allegations had gone about to introduce a censorious bill in the parliament curbing Freedom of Press that did not however pass.)
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<20230130> However, it was also during this decade of the 80s when the Hindu-right-wing parties out of the RSS-core would start to mobilize mass support for various fanatical socio-religious causes that included bans on cow-slaughter, meat & alcohol-consumption? vague herbal-medicine quackery? threats to inter-faith marriages? brahmanical-caste politics? asserting 'Hindu-Hindi-Hindustan' core-agendas, Indian History recidivist-revisionism in education, etc., still growing out of a smaller political base now largely being galvanized by the BJP (merged from the former Jan Sangh and Janata Party), and extreme fringe groups as Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), Bajrang Dal, etc. mostly within the populous Northern states of UP, Bihar, including western states of Gujarat and Rajasthan. Likewise, of similar Hindu-ideological backgrounds and ethno-centric populism in Mumbai and Maharashtra, gave rise to the Shiv Sena Party, who additionally perpetrated vandalism and thuggery against South Indian businesses & migrant labourers, and demanded office-job reservations for Marathi-folks in private-corporations, etc. Recognizing the growing popularity of these right-wing religious parties in those electoral bell-weather states and scheming with them an anti-Congress seat-sharing arrangement in those constituencies, and meanwhile formalizing alliances with secular Left including both the Communist-parties? in West Bengal and elsewhere, Shri. VP Singh, the ousted Congress minister, having floated his own party, the Janata Dal (JD) out of the remnants of the non-Congress secular parties as the Jan Morcha, Congress-S, Janata party, Lok Dal, etc., went to polls in the 1989 elections as the National-Front Alliance, and cobbled together a coalition government in India's 9th National Parliament, and thus Shri. Vishwanath Pratap Singh would take his place as the nation's 7th (8th) Prime Minister (1989-90?).
The other main fall-out of these new political arrangements from those elections, and continuing into the next 3 decades was that, one, the BJP party being allowed that first time to gain close to 90 seats then, would go on thereafter increasing their seat-share to be able to arrive at point of heading a coalition-government once in 1999 as the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), and eventually attaining single-party majority twice (2014, 2019); and two, while the Grand Old Party of India– the Indian National Congress, who had been India's only single-majority party in nearly all previous elections till 1989, could only garner a total of 197 seats in those elections, but who would, sadly, thereafter for the next 30 years, not even once gain a single-party majority on their own, not even on the two occassions in 2004 & 2009 when they formed coalition governments as the United Progressive Alliance (UPA). (A single-party majority in the Indian Parliament since 1962? electorates to present, is any one party that has won at least 272 out of 543? seats in the 'proportionately-represented' Lok Sabha / Lower-House / House of the Peoples.)
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<20230106> A series of events then that traces some of its beginnings to the previous PM. Rajiv Gandhi's administration itself, concerns the time in 1987 when the Supreme Court of India had ruled in favour of Women's Rights in the 'Shah Bano Case' pertaining to Muslim Family Law, and while the Congress Government had initially supported the ruling but when faced with resistance from the Muslim religious community and associated losses in some by-elections, PM. Rajiv Gandhi had redacted those changes, and had instead reactionarily enacted specific exemptions in the Civilian Code pertaining to Muslim Women to repeal that Supreme Court ruling. This volta-face had, in fact, alienated some of the younger party members and the secular Muslim party members within the Congress and who would break away in the following elections, and PM. Rajiv Gandhi instead of reconciliation and moving forwards had rather brought back the older party members of the Congress from his mother PM Indira Gandhi's time to run the party organization. This also is attributed as the reason for the failure of Congress Party in those 1989 elections. But further this Congress 'Appeasement', apparently, of the Muslim religious community had evoked a backlash from the Hindu religious Community who had protested over some kind of equalization of religious laws in India, as had been conducted with reforms to specifically only the Hindu Family Law in the 1950s by PM Nehru. And so, in attempting to diffuse this riotous situation that arose in 1987, the PM Rajiv Gandhi administration was said to have struck a compromise by directing the courts in that mad populous state of Uttar Pradesh to give some kind of leeway to the Hindu-religious community regarding the contentious issue of 'Ayodhya' (which had been remained in some kind of 'suspended judgement' by these courts since 1950s?) involving a 'Ram' Temple and the 'Babri Masjid' Mosque within the same precincts
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<20230106> The absurdity, aside from the specifics of this matter is this apparently– that the Muslims cared about some 15th century mosque, among the many others built under Babar's reign, the first of the Mughals, but who only did spend some 4 years in India before retiring to a life in Kabul, and who was probably the less illustrious and the less loved of the Indian people of those times than the other Indian-born Mughals as Akbar and his descendants. While the Hindu-fanatics claimed a mythical fictitious story of Ram from 3 or 4 millennia ago to be this factual historical place of his birth and wanted to build a temple to consecrate that myth, when if anything, they should have been instead using that money to promote the 'Power of Education' which would itself serve as a remembrance to Valmiki the famed author of Ramayana, who as an 'Adivasi' forest-dweller of the 'low hunter-caste' by the banks of the river Yamuna had attained brahmanical knowledge in his time, and whose literary achievement ranks with that of the great Homer, the author of the Greek epics Iliad and Odyssey.
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<20230106> The spillover of the Ayodhya issue happened later around 1990, with the BJP's fanatical support base in the Northern and Western States and those other right-wing Hindu extremist groups as mentioned, who organized a massive mob of so-called 'Ram Sevaks' (or the 'Monkey-Army') to storm and vandalize the contested precinct that had been cordoned-off by order of the Courts?, and the UP state police had intervened timely with firings and arrests, and the disaster had been temporarily averted but that the BJP party at the center had threatened a withdrawal of support to the scrambling National-Front Alliance of PM VP Singh. But that later again in 1992, when the BJP party had come to power for the first time in that state of Uttar Pradesh?, those villainous BJP leaders on their infamous chariot rath-yatra had returned with the Monkey-Army, and this time these vandals set about to destroy the Babri Masjid mosque, and did manage to do so with some degree of non-interference from the UP State Government and its law-enforcement police. By the time the new Central Government could intervene then (invoking Article 356 President's Rule?), the destruction of the mosque was complete, and the vandalizing 'Monkey-Army' and its riot-leaders were arrested. But these events had gone on to inflame riots in UP, and that would soon spread to other states as Bihar, Gujarat, Maharashtra, etc. So, the Ayodhya precincts was once again cordoned by order of the Supreme Court? for the next 2 decades
While, however, in recent years since 2014 after the BJP party came to power at the Center, they were able to obtain a court-ordered clearance allowing the building of the Ram Temple in the disputed site, and was reported in 2022 to have raised over ₹1000 crores through donations towards its construction. It remains to be seen, since the allocation of the site and the construction of this Ram Temple has made use of Government Funds, if the Supreme Court might rule according to Article 15 & Article 26 of the Indian Constitution, that the site may still be used for worship by all groups of people irrespective of their religion, without endangering Peace and Harmony of the region. If thus decided, wouldn't it be a tremendous opportunity for the UP Government for promoting tourism by setting a stage for the world to witness real inter-faith harmony possible in India by allowing within this disputed precinct along with the Ram Temple, the building of a mosque for Muslims, a church for Christians, a synagogue for Jews, a Zoroastrian-temple for the Parsees, a gurudwara for Sikhs, a vihara for Buddhists, a Tirtankara-temple for Jains, a forest patch for Nature-worshippers, and a Space-Museum for Atheists?
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<20230130> The other main protest movements that erupted in the India in 1990 that shook the already fragile 11-month old National-Front coalition government of PM VP Singh, resulted because of his hasty introduction of the bill for further 'Affirmative Action' of 'Other Backward Castes' as determined by a report of the 'Mandal Commission' in 1979, one that had been shelved by the previous central administrations, and one that would result in a near total of 50% 'Reservations'? (stacked with the 1950s Reservations for 'Scheduled Castes' and 'Scheduled Tribes' SC/ST within the Constitution), and would become applicable to availability of college and university seats, competitive exams, government jobs, promotions, and other Public Service benefits, etc. The enactment of this Bill faced opposition from within and outside the coalition, and had to be eventually stayed by the Supreme Court of India because of the violent intensification of riots that followed thereafter.
The legislative and general public discontent over the matter of 'Reservations' ('Affirmative Action') in India has been that the relevance of Caste as a deciding factor in any reserved allocations (over 75 years of Independence in India now) had diminished, whereas the spread of Poverty and other Socio-Economic Inequalities included over hundred millions of people in India, belonging to all 'Regular Castes' and particularly Minority Religious Groups, and they were thus being denied by these specific Reservation-clauses. Additionally, these 'Reservations' policies when first introduced many decades ago were regarded as 'Temporary Measures' to facilitate Equalization of Status and Opportunities for all our Peoples, and that whenever these policies were extended the overarching decisive factors would be to better the prevailing conditions of 'Socio-Economics', 'Gender-Equality', 'Quality-of-Life' regardless of Caste, Religion, Race, etc. but ultimately however that Meritocracy would be allowed to prevail.
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Eventually, these main events of the time led to a split of the Janata Dal from the National Front Alliance and the resignation of PM VP Singh, while the remaining members of the coalition formed a government with Shri. K Chandrasekhar as the 8th (9th) Prime Minister (1990-91) with temporarily obtained outside support of the Congress Party for about 6-months in which time a 'No-Confidence' was passed, the parliament was dissolved and new elections announced for 1991.
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So, it is in these months of campaigning for the 1991 elections that Shri. Rajiv Gandhi would lose his life, but that the Congress Party would gain about 240 seats in those elections to be able to form a coalition government between 1991-96 headed by Shri. PV Narasimha Rao, a Congressman of vast experience in international relations, and the first person of South-Indian origin to be sworn in as the 9th (10th) Prime-Minister of India, who would nominate the exemplary economist Dr. Manmohan Singh as India's Finance Minister at the time.
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[20230131] From the point of view of the economy under PM Rajiv Gandhi's administration, the years between 1985-89 is seen as when India first began to tap into increased middle-class spending on consumer products such as telephones, TVs, refrigerators, two-wheelers, and cars, including surges in housing and real-estate markets; And that India would witness an increased industrial growth of around 8.9%, (including the spectacular rise of Reliance Industries, whose phenomenal success at the time is seen in their sponsorship of the 1987 Cricket World Cup Tournament in India, the first to be held outside England, and the first to be played in 'Colours', and hence dubbed 'Pyjama Cricket' thereafter.) But the downside of this economic relaxation was seen in the increasing nexus between politicians and business lobbyists.
While India, at this time, would experience an average yearly GDP growth rate of 5.5 percent, second only to China's 9.8%, it would additionally go on to increase its manufactured-exports to 75% of total-exports but in volumes continue to lag far behind East Asian countries; And, although public savings-investment gap increased about 2.5% of GDP, the government's fiscal-deficit verged towards 10% of GDP, and domestic-debt closed in on 50% of GDP; While with foreign-debt rising above $37.5 billion, India's Foreign-Exchange Reserves had dipped below $4 billion. Some of these figures would worsen under the National-Front administration from 1989-91, particularly affected by the rising oil-prices from the USA-Iraq Gulf War, so much so that India only had enough foreign-exchange reserves to cover about 2-weeks of imports in July 1991, and it is right at this edge of disaster and defaulting, that our Finance Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh would initiate and unleash forward sweeping policy reforms in the period that would come to be regarded as the 'Economic Liberalization Era' of India!
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[End of Part 4 of Note to General-Secretary of INC]
Online References: To be added…