Telangana govt launches Narasimha Rao’s birth centenary

The year-long birth centenary celebrations of former Prime Minister P V Narasimha Rao by the Telangana government got off to a start with Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao making a strong pitch for conferring “Bharat Ratna” on the late leader, placing him on par with the country’s first PM Jawaharlal Nehru. The Chief Minister paid glowing tributes to the late leader, who hailed from the state, at his ‘samadhi’ “PV Gyan.

PV Narasimha Rao

• Pamulapati Venkata Narasimha Rao was born on 28 June 1921 in a village in the then Karimnagar district of Andhra Pradesh, which is currently a region of Telangana state.
• Narasimha Rao completed his early education at a local school in Karimnagar district, after which he joined Osmania University in Hyderabad and graduated from there.
• After completing his graduation, Narasimha Rao proceeded to higher studies and completed a master’s degree in law from Hislop Colleg.
• PV Narasimha Rao was also known as an active student leader, where he led several satyagraha movements in various areas of erstwhile Andhra Pradesh. Narasimha Rao was also an active participant in the Vande Mataram Movement in Hyderabad in the 1930s.
• Narasimha Rao was also known for his unprecedented linguistic skills, having mastered 10 Indian languages ​​as well as 6 foreign languages.

Narasimha Rao as Prime Minister

• Narasimha Rao as Prime Minister is mainly recognized as one of the reforms undertaken by him. One of the most important decisions of PV Narasimha Rao as Prime Minister is the appointment of a non-political candidate as Finance Minister.
• Under the expertise of Dr. Manmohan Singh, PV Narasimha Rao’s government mainly took the following decisions:
• The SEBI Act 1992 (Securities and Exchange Board of India Act, 1992) and the Securities Laws (Amendment) were introduced, through which SEBI got the legal right to register and regulate all securities market intermediaries.
• In 1992, the Controller of Capital Issues body was abolished, setting the price and number of shares that could be issued by companies.
• It was only in 1992 that India’s equity markets were opened to foreign institutional investors, as well as to allow Indian companies to raise capital from international markets by issuing Global Depository Receipts-GDRs.
• The National Stock Exchange (NSE) was introduced in 1994 as a computer-based trading system. It is noteworthy that by the year 1996, the NSE began to emerge as India’s largest exchange.
• Foreign Direct Investment – FDI was encouraged by increasing the cap on foreign capital share in joint ventures from 40 percent to 51 percent.
• Apart from the new economic policy, PV Narasimha Rao also played an important role in shaping the country’s diplomacy policy after the Cold War.
• It was also during the tenure of Narasimha Rao that the Look East policy of India also started, through which the direction of India’s trade was shifted towards the Southeast Asian nations.

UPSC