India Gained Economic Freedom With the 1991 Reforms: Das. Angry Mani, That’s Disinformation!

Former union minister and politician, Mani Shankar Aiyar, squirmed in his chair, saddened and shocked by author and columnist, Gurcharan Das, choosing to refer to the 1991 reforms under the then PV Narasimha Rao government as the event that set the ball rolling for economic freedom of India. On the second day of the Jaipur Literature Festival, their riveting conversation on post-partition politics with Mandira Nayar at the Durbar Hall came to a abrupt and an inconclusive end after a visibly miffed Aiyar accused his fellow panelist of distorting (history) and pinning such disinformation as the undoing of the state we are in. 

While 1947 marked the political azaadi of the country, the true economic liberation came about in 1991 with the dismantling of the license raj.

Gurcharan Das

I completely disagree with the last few remarks. I think he’s completely distorted everything that we stand for and we’ve come to this present state because of that kind of thinking.

Mani Shankar Aiyar

Towards the penultimate moments of the discussion centered mostly around the partition of India, Gurcharan Das asserted that while 1947 marked the political azaadi of the country, the true economic liberation came about in 1991 with the dismantling of the license raj. His remark elicited an immediate and vocal dissent from Aiyar who was quick to express his strong disagreement. “I completely disagree with the last few remarks of GD. I think he’s completely distorted everything that we stand for and we’ve come to this present state because of that kind of thinking,” he said. 

Sensing the simmering tension between the panelists, the organisers skipped the ritualistic Q&A with the audience prompting an abrupt end to the discussion. Quite ironically, former prime minister Manmohan Singh of the Sonia Gandhi-led UPA coalition was the finance minister under whose guidance the reforms were initiated in 1991. However, the significant economic reforms in 1991, orchestrated during Manmohan Singh’s tenure as Finance Minister, were clouded by personal tensions between Sonia Gandhi and Narasimha Rao.

Speaking about the Indo-Pak relations, Mani Shankar Aiyar said, “Our biggest asset in Pakistan is the people of Pakistan. So although dictatorship in Pakistan is terrible for the Pakistani people, it’s very good for us (diplomatically) , and therefore, I would earnestly recommend, as I do in my book, that we should be in continuous dialogue with the Pakistanis because solutions come very easily.” 

Additionally, while alluding to his being a witness to the dialogue between the two countries during that period, Aiyar presented an anecdote considered among the most compelling instances of communication with Pakistan. During Manmohan Singh’s tenure as Prime Minister, a discreet backchannel dialogue unfolded between Satinder Kumar Lambah, also known as Sati in the Indian Civil Services then, and Tariq Aziz on the Pakistani side. Notably, their discussions centered solely on the Kashmir issue, resulting in what Aiyar claimed was a comprehensive formula from which the then President, Pervez Musharraf picked up 4 key points. 

Taking a leaf from his experience and fair in dialogues, he criticised the current BJP-led NDA government’s reluctance to engage in diplomatic discussions. He said, “If we talk to Pakistanis, we find solutions and if we don’t talk to them, how are we going to find solutions and I don’t understand a government that has the courage to conduct surgical strikes against the Pakistanis but doesn’t have the guts to sit across a table and talk to them. I don’t understand our Pakistani policy at all.”  

This is not the first instance of Aiyar taking a swipe at PM Narendra Modi. Back when he was aspiring to become the Prime Minister while serving as the Chief Minister of Gujarat, Mani came up with the uncharacteristic ‘chaiwala‘ jibe, announcing that Modi would never become the PM of the country, a prediction which would turn out to be spectacular failure.  

Earlier on writing a memoir, Gurcharan Das reflected, “When you write a memoir, you have to remember your life, and in remembering, you relive it your life and when you remember your life, you relive your life and I have discovered that reliving your life is actually better than living it. And why? Because you can play God. You decide which incident you put in and what you leave out. At the end of the day, nobody really knows what happened so the memory of the event is better than the event itself.” He also expressed that he feels that even today, closure eludes us regarding the partition. He said, “I believe we need a profound writer, akin to Tolstoy, to bring about that sense of closure.”