To the Brink and Back: India's 1991 Story

230 Pages·2015·10.15 MB·English

by  Jairam Ramesh

TO THE BRINK
AND BACK
Other Books by Jairam Ramesh
Mobilizing Technology for World Development (co-editor)
Kautilya Today: Jairam Ramesh on a Globalizing India
Making Sense of Chindia (also in Chinese)
Green Signals: Ecology, Growth and Democracy in India
Legislating for Justice: The Making of the 2013 Land Acquisition Law (co-
author)

Published by
Rupa Publications India Pvt. Ltd 2015
7/16, Ansari Road, Daryaganj
New Delhi 110002

Sales Centres:
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Copyright © Jairam Ramesh 2015

The copyright for the cartoons by R.K. Laxman vests
with RK IPR Management Limited. Reproduced with permission.

Photograph inserts courtesy Hindustan Times,
India Today and the Press Information Bureau.

The views and opinions expressed in this book are the author’s own and the facts
are as reported by him which have been verified to the extent possible,
and the publishers are not in any way liable for the same.

All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted,
or stored in a retrieval system, in any form or by any means,
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without the prior permission of the publisher.

eISBN: 9788129136497

First impression 2015

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please;
they do not make it under self-selected circumstances,
but under circumstances existing already,
given and transmitted from the past
KARL MARX
Contents
Key Dates and Events between June and August 1991 Covered in This Book
1. Narasimha Rao’s Entry
2. The Economic Crisis of Early 1991
3. The Inevitability of Dr Manmohan Singh as Finance Minister
4. The Flap on the Roll-back of Prices
5. The One-pager to Our Man in the IMF
6. The Devaluation Trauma
7. The Continuing Gold Sales Controversy
8. The Default Option Remembered
9. Statements: Right and Left
10. Jyoti Basu Writes to the Prime Minister
11. Chidambaram in Quick Action
12. The Curious Case of the Prime Minister’s 9 July Speech
13. The Sanskritist Prime Minister
14. The K.N. Raj Interview
15. The Industrial Policy Reforms Drama
16. Dr Singh’s Day Out: The Budget of 24 July
17. The First Review by the Finance Minister
18. The Prime Minister’s Gorbachev Goof-up
19. The Last Week of August 1991
20. And That’s It!
21. A Final Word