Atul’s Song A Day- A choice collection of Hindi Film & Non-Film Songs

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This day that year-24 July
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A few days ago, songs were discussed from movies called 26^th January and 25^th July. We all know the significance of 26^th January. But what is the importance of 25^th July ? Reading about the story in the article tells us that unlike 26 January, 25 july was an imaginary movie. It was an imaginary action movie.

Today is 24 July. If a movie called 24 July will ever be made, it will not be an imaginary movie. 24 July is a very important day in the history of India. In my opinion it is as important a day for India as 15 August and 26 January.

In a few articles that I have written, I have mentioned 11 May as a day which is an important for India as 15 august and 26 January. 24 July falls in the same category. In fact, 24 July laid the foundation for 11 May. 11 may would not have become possible without 24 July.

In a way, 24 July is a day when India, which was in an unprecedented precarious situation, turned course, and took steps that not only rescued India, but ensured that India would never have to face the same situation ever again. Lives of vast Indian population would become better than the lives of their ancestors because of this particular date.

What exactly happened on 24 July ? We will need to go back to 15 august 1947 and 26 january 1950 and thereafter to appreciate the significance of 24 july 1991.

When India became independent, India was a desperately poor country. It did not produce enough foodgrains to feed its population. It had no manufacturing sector to speak of. It was rhetorically stated that even a needle was not manufactured in India. As for service sector, even that was infinitesimally small. Literacy level was 12 %. Life expectancy was 32 years. Today even country with the least life expectancy (Central African Republic) has a life expectancy of 52 years. Even the country with lowest literacy today (Niger) has a literacy rate of 19 %. One can say that India was in a far far worse condition than the condition of the least developed nations of the world today.

Those days, there were two kinds of economies. One was western kind of economy that was capitalism. Second was socialist economies that was pioneered in Soviet Union. India had won its freedom from Britain which practiced capitalism. So Indian political leadership was convinced that capitalism must be bad. So they chose the other option which was Socialism.

Socialism was not just in the air but also in the hearts and minds of most intellectuals and political leaders. Unlike in the Soviet Union and China that abolished private property and put the government directly in charge of all economic affairs, India followed a middle path. The Indian state implemented central planning with myriad controls over prices and quantities to achieve a “socialist pattern of society.”

The basic premise of this state controlled economy was that the government controlled economic activities. Private economic activities were discouraged. To discourage private economic activities, a whole lots of restrictions were imposed on public. They were known by their acronym LPQ (License, Permit, Quota).

The License Raj or Permit Raj was the system of Licenses, Regulations that hindered the setup and running of the business in India between 1947 and 1990. This term was coined by Indian Independence activist Chakravarti Rajagopalachari.

It basically meant that any private individual needed to take license to start any economic activity. They needed a permit to consume items. They had a quota fixed for manufacturing items and /or buying items. These License, Permit and quota were very difficult to come by, and when they were allotted, they would often be less that the amount applied for. Imagine if someone needs 100 sacks of cement to construct his house. He would need to take permissions from the administration. The administration would keep him on tenterhooks and finally after long delay give him permission for only 40 sacks of cement. Even these sacks of cement may not be easily available because the few cement factories that had the permit to manufacture cement also had fixed quota beyond which they could not produce cement. So the system ended up discouraging private economic activities however essential they may be. It bred corruption and gave rise to black market activities.

Licenses were required for starting new companies, for producing new products or expanding production capacities. Businesses had to have government approval for laying off workers and for shutting down. Virtually shut off imports with high tariffs, low import quotas and outright banning of import of certain products. For example, the import tariff for cars was around 125% in 1960. This gave rise to lucrative illegal activity called smuggling. Villains in Hindi movies were shown as indulging in smuggling. Biggest dons of Bombay made their earning thanks to smuggling.

India in 1985 had the highest level of tariffs in the world. Nominal tariff rates as percentage of values in 1985 were: 146.4 percent for intermediate goods; 107.3 percent for capital goods; 140.9 percent for consumer goods and 137.7 percent on manufacturing goods.

Government had total monopoly on development activities.

The economic policies were set in place by means of different policy decisions. Here are the important ones:

One can see that the policies of 1940s and 1950s still had some scope for private enterprises. But all these scopes were ended by policies adopted from 1969 onwards. If Indian economy is likened to a human, then this human was sentenced to simple house arrest by the policies of 1940s and 1950s. The policies of 1969 onwards changed it to rigorous imprisonment and that too in Kaala paani.

China, and South East Asians countries, were in the same boat as India in 1940s, and some of them had also started as “socialist” countries. These countries soon saw the writing on the wall and took to capitalism, some of them (like China) doing it while still claiming to be following socialism. Indian economy boat, on the other hand, was sinking, but Indians were not aware of it.

When economy is murdered like this, its signs are visible in various forms. One of them is lack of foreign exchange for essential imports. Since India did not export much and did not allow inflow of funds to India, so they did not have enough foreign exchange. To fill the gap, they were dependent on grants (doles) from rich countries. But even these countries were unlikely to come to the assistance of India as and when India needed assistance. So the only way left for Indian government was to approach the bank of last resort, namely IMF. So India kept approaching IMF fairly regularly. They had approached IMF four times from 1950s to 1960s.

Here are the details:-

The SDR is an international reserve asset. The SDR is not a currency, but its value is based on a basket of five currencies—the US dollar, the euro, the Chinese renminbi, the Japanese yen, and the British pound sterling.
The SDR value in terms of the US dollar is determined daily based on the spot exchange rates observed at around noon London time. Nowadays (after internet came into existence)it is posted on the IMF website.

Individuals and private entities cannot hold SDRs. IMF members – and the IMF itself – hold SDRs and the IMF has the authority to approve other holders, such as central banks and multilateral development banks, while individuals and private entities cannot hold SDRs. As of February 2023, there were 20 organizations approved as prescribed holders. Participating members and prescribed holders can buy and sell SDRs. However, prescribed holders do not receive allocations of SDRs, and they may not request an exchange of SDRs in transactions with designation as members do.

One can see that India sought IMF loan of SDR 72.5 millions, 100 millions, 100 millions and 200 millions in 1950s and 1960s to tide over financial crisis.

People who read news about IMF may be aware that IMF, while granting loan, sets some pre conditions, viz changing policies so that the economy does not face similar challenges again. Following the conditions of IMF depends on the government. If Government is ruled by people with short term vision whose aim is to manage by fire fighting,then they take the loan, avoid the immediate crisis, and after that it is business as usual. That is what was happening in India.

For example, when INDIA approached IMF in 1965, IMF set the condition that India had to devalue its currency. So India agreed to devalue Rupee by 36.5 %. 6 June 1966 devaluation forced upon Indira Gandhi was a political and economic disaster for her as well as India. After that it was business as usual. Or rather, India (irked by the aftermath of following IMF dictates) went in the opposite direction by passing a host of anti economy laws.

Result of all these anti economy draconian economic policies were seen in 1980s, when India was forced to approach IMF for the fifth time.

Here are the details:-

This time the amount was bigger viz SDR 5 billions. Out of it, India availed SDR 3.9 billions.

Some attempts were made from 1984 to 1989 onwards to open up the economy.

1.The key step to achieve it was diluting the license permit system.
2. taxes and tariffs lowered.
3. 25 industries got relaxation from requiring licenses for their operations.
4. More diversification of products was allowed.
5. The Monopolies and Restrictive Trade Practices(MRTP) scrutiny limits were restored to that of pre-license raj years. The number of industries that required to undergo MRTP scrutiny was also lowered to half and the number of companies that required the same was reduced to 15% of the previous value.
6. The telecommunication sector was opened to private enterprises in the form of equipment manufacturing.
7. The Center for Development of Telematics (C-DOT), an autonomous agency was established to boost the Information and Technology sector.
8.Attempt was made to open up civil aviation to private enterprises.

While attempts were made to open up economy, proper care was not taken to ensure that safety valves were in place. To take advantage of liberalized policies, Business houses took loans to import equipment. In the short turn, infusion of these foreign loans were reflected as enhanced economic activities, but that was short lived. When it was time to pay up the short term loans, it turned out that RBI did not have enough foreign exchange for that.

the Gulf War of 1990 had shot up the price of oil which India bought from the world market to fulfill large demands. USSR, the biggest supporter of India was in turmoil and it broke off into 15 parts. The political chaos in India had led to the withdrawal of 900 million USD worth of deposits from Indian banks by the non-resident Indians. All these developments meant that India had very little foreign exchange left and India was on the verge of default.

This led to India having to go to the IMF yet again in 1991.

Here are the details of India going to IMF in 1991:-

India at that time had a minority government. Under normal circumstances, Public would not have bothered with this IMF bailout. But a reporter came to know that RBI Gold was being taken to airport to be sent to IMF as mortgage to avail the loan. This news made headlines and Indians, most of them self respecting, were shocked.

“Growth during the 1980s was also propelled by fiscal expansion financed by borrowing abroad and at home. But this was unsustainable and led to the crisis of June 1991,” notes Arvind Panagariya in an IMF Working Paper titled ‘India in the 1980s and 1990s: A Triumph of Reforms’.

Elections were announced in May 1991 in several phases. In the midst of election, Rajiv Gandhi, the former PM, was assassinated and the country was plunged into another state of Political uncertainty.

When remaining phases of elections took place under changed circumstances, Congress became the largest party and looked likely to form a minority government. With Rajiv Gandhi no longer at the helm, PV Narsimha Rao, someone who was asked to retire from politics and who was accordingly in the process of moving out from New Delhi to his native state of Andhra Pradesh, found himself becoming the Congress Party President and therefore Prime Minister candidate.

As PM Designate, PV Narsimha Rao was given a list of urgent items to be addressed by Cabinet Secretary Naresh Chandra. It was then that he realized the gravity of economical crisis facing India. Till that time, he was a staunch status quoist and a socialist. The man who confessed that he did not understand economics realised the magnitude of the crisis in a couple of hours on June 19. That was two days before he was sworn in as PM. He read the note on the economic crisis. It took just a few hours for Rao to change his mind and become an economic liberaliser. The note contained the core reforms that Government would have to implement within the next few weeks later. It listed out devaluation, trade liberalization, de-licensing, etc.

While he had no problems allotting other portfolios to political heavyweights, he decided that portfolios that were to play key roles in facing the economic crisis were to be manned by competent persons he could trust. He sought out an economist for the post of Finance Minister. The first person approached was I G Patel, who declined the offer. The other economist approached was Manmohan Singh, and he accepted. P Chidambaram, another economist was made Commerce minister. PV Narsimha Rao kept Industry ministry with himself, with one minister of state (P J Kurien) in the ministry.

On 25 june 1991, opposition leaders, including V.P. Singh of the National Front and Jaswant Singh of the BJP, were briefed by the new finance minister Manmohan Singh in the presence of PM. At the meeting, Manmohan Singh gave details of the crisis: ‘I told them all the things that were necessary to control the fiscal deficit, to change the thinking on industrial policy, to liberalise the economy.’ the Opposition was stunned; they had not realized the gravity of the situation.

Confiding in political opponents was both magnanimous as well as sagacious for a prime minister who did not have a majority in Parliament. Rao, however, chose not to tell the opposition leaders two things. That he would devalue the rupee soon. And that India’s gold was being mortgaged in return for foreign loans yet again. Had they known, they would not have allowed these actions, regardless of how serious the crisis was.

The first devaluation of the rupee of 7-9% against major currencies took place on July 1. The second devaluation of about 11% happened on July 3. The political fallout of 20 % devaluation was enormous, but PV Narsimha Rao managed to tide over it.

Devaluation done, it was time for export subsidy to go. It was commerce ministry domain. Since an expensive rupee made it harder for Indian manufacturers to sell in the foreign market, the Indian government had created a Cash Compensatory Scheme, or CCS, for exporters—yet another example of how subsidy begot subsidy, i.e. how the Indian state first intervened in the market to create a distortion, then intervened again with a distortion in the opposite direction. But with the rupee now closer to its true value after the depreciation, an export subsidy was superfluous, and Manmohan decided to get rid of it. Montek Ahluwalia and his commerce minister, Chidambaram, spent the afternoon of 3 July pondering the implications of what was being asked. A ministry meant to promote exports was being told to eliminate an export subsidy. Ahluwalia explained to Chidambaram that there was logic in what the finance minister was proposing, especially since they needed to save money. Chidambaram agreed to abolish the CCS. The removal of the CCS was sure to worry exporters. In order to assuage them, the commerce ministry decided to offer them an immediate sop. The ministry had already been considering major trade policy reforms involving new incentives for exports. This was in the form of an ‘enlarged replenishment license entitlement’ which could be used to import restricted items. Chidambaram and Ahluwalia wanted this policy to be announced simultaneously with the abolition of export subsidy. Since this could only be done with the approval of the finance minister, they sought a meeting with Manmohan Singh to explain the proposal. He readily agreed, despite reservations from his officials. All three of them visited Narasimha Rao at his house that very night for his consent. In less than twelve hours, the policy had got changed.

Devaluation done, export subsidy removal done, the prime minister and his team turned to the next set of reforms. The need to change industrial policy—the red tape that so tightly bound private manufacturers.

Rakesh Mohan, a Princeton-trained economist had prepared skeleton of a new industrial policy in 1988 during the tenure of previous government. The proposal of Industrial bill was revolutionary. In a significant reversal of policy presumptions, the private sector could operate freely in almost any industry, without prior government permission. But the recommendations gathered dust, mired in political infighting. It was time to implement it now.

In July 1991, Prime Minister Rao—in his avatar as the new industry minister—gave Amar Nath Varma (now principal secretary) the mandate to convert that draft into policy. Varma called his friend, the then industry secretary, Suresh Mathur, for a discussion, along with Rakesh Mohan (economist) and Jairam Ramesh (Congress Party back office man on economic affairs). He told them this was the chance they had been waiting for, since ‘the prime minister had deliberately kept the industry portfolio to himself’.

By 7 July, Rakesh Mohan’s original draft had been polished into what would become the new industrial policy. PM would later say that freeing domestic entrepreneurs from state control was the single most important economic decision he would make.

Rao asked Jairam Ramesh for a summary of the changes so that he could brief his party. A five-page note reached the prime minister around 8 July. The next day, Rao met the CPP and informed it that he would announce comprehensive changes to the industrial policy soon. Rao was careful not to go into the details; he did not want the Opposition to pre-empt him.

A few days later, on 12 July, Rao leaked details of his industrial policy to Hindustan Times, which published an article titled ‘Industrial Licensing to Go’. The author Kalyani Shankar (close confidant of Narsimha Rao) wrote that ‘all industrial licenses except for a short negative list’ would be removed soon. She even listed the significant features: automatic permission for foreign investment up to 51 per cent; an increase in the exempt threshold under the anti-monopoly law; the removal of phased manufacturing; and an end to other manufacturing limits.

Jairam Ramesh, terrified that he would be blamed for the leak, rushed to the prime minister’s office, only to be informally told that the leak had come from the boss himself. Rao was testing reactions to the policy before formally announcing it. Three days later, Narasimha Rao stood up in Parliament during the vote of confidence in his government. As before, he made use of the threat to the prestige of the nation, urging the Opposition to give up their maximalist ideologies in the face of calamity. He quoted a Sanskrit verse to make his point: ‘Sarvanashe samutpanne ardham tyajati panditah.’ (‘Faced with total ruin, the wise settle for half.’)

That same day, 15 July 1991, Narasimha Rao asked for the note on industrial policy to be presented before the Cabinet—the final step before a policy is put into effect.

The Cabinet meeting was scheduled for 19 July, and a few days before, Rakesh Mohan (along with the bureaucrat N. Krishnan) was instructed to meet Arjun Singh (a major opponent of PV Narsimha Rao) in private to convince him of the merits of the policy. That meeting did not go well. When the Cabinet met some days later, ministers opposed both the style and substance of the draft policy. Arjun Singh and M.L. Fotedar, in particular, were outspoken in their hostility. Rao remained silent, leaving his finance minister to face the fury. The policy was sent back to the drawing board, but crucially, Rao ensured that the substance remained untouched. Jairam Ramesh worked, instead, to add a longish preamble which linked the new ideas to the fundamental ideals of the Congress, Nehru and Indira Gandhi. It worked. When the Union Cabinet met again, on the morning of 23 July, those who had opposed the policy earlier were reassured by the addition of the preamble.

That afternoon, Rao convened a meeting of the CWC at his house. He began by saying that all that the new policy did was to reverse Indira Gandhi’s sharp leftward tilt in 1969, and take the country back to the more flexible 1956 policy resolution of Nehru. The Congress, Rao added, continued to believe in the ‘commanding heights of the public sector’.

Rao then let his finance minister speak. Learning from his political master, Manmohan invoked Congress’ 1991 election manifesto to show that within it lay the seeds of the new industrial policy. This was far from the truth, but as Manmohan Singh came out of the meeting, Arjun Singh told him: ‘Dr Singh, you have read the manifesto more carefully than we have.’ The ploy had worked. Narasimha Rao, assisted by Manmohan Singh, had been able to take a policy that was in cold storage, make surface changes, and seamlessly link it to a Nehruvian past—all to drag his party behind the most revolutionary economic reform in the history of independent India. As Rakesh Mohan put it, “We had authored this policy before. Hum to likhte rahte hain [We keep writing]. But it would not have gone anywhere without a clear political mandate. I would give credit to Rao for his unwavering political backing. ”

In parallel to the maneuvering over industrial policy, was the maneuvering over the budget, scheduled to be presented to Parliament on 24 July 1991. The budget consists of a report on expenditure, new schemes, taxation plans, and the budget speech itself. The budget is the financial statement of the government, a simple accounting exercise. Most countries do not consider it important. But over the years in India, it has become one of the few occasions when Parliament actually deliberates on policy.

In 1991, it was the ideal platform for the government of the day to announce its vision.

Preparations for the 1991 budget were coordinated by finance minister Manmohan Singh. He consulted at length with the ministries of industry, commerce, as well as the prime minister’s office. Holding the fort at the PMO was Amar Nath Varma, who had fast established himself as Narasimha Rao’s point man on economic reforms.

Early in July, Varma instituted the Thursday afternoon meeting on economic policy in his office in South Block, near the prime minister’s room. Varma would lay out an opulent lunch, often with kebabs and cutlets, and ask the chief bureaucrats of various departments a simple question: What was this week’s reform? The fruits of the Thursday meeting would then be sent to the Cabinet for final approval. ‘Varma Thursdays’ would be the engine of reforms for five unbroken years. For the month of July 1991, these meetings were used to discuss budget minutiae, which would then make their way to a super draft, stored in the finance ministry. Since the budget was a sensitive document that businessmen would pay money to know in advance, its preparation was shrouded in secrecy.

In the weeks before 24 July, everyone working on the budget lived locked-down in a basement in North Block. They had to eat and sleep there, with no telephones to connect them to the world. Only a select few, such as the finance minister, were allowed in and out of the basement. The draft would remain secret until it was read out by Manmohan in Parliament on 24 July. In his speech to the nation on 9 July, Narasimha Rao had hinted that the budget would pursue a reform agenda. But it is possible that the scale of what the prime minister wanted was not known to the mandarins in the finance ministry—some of whom were opposed to concessions to the West.

The final draft of the budget, ready by 21 July, was groundbreaking. It overhauled the import-export policy, better connecting India to the world market. It also slashed subsidies, and made foreign investment easier. The budget was going to shatter the third pillar of the license-permit-quota raj: isolation of India from the global economy.

Manmohan Singh wanted the budget speech to include the new industrial policy. This would send out a clear signal that the government was committed to both external and internal liberalization. But the bureaucrats at the industry ministry, recent converts to reforms, wanted glory of their own. They demanded a separate announcement by the industry minister. The fact that the normally protectionist officials were falling over each other to take credit for reform shows how quickly the Narasimha Rao government was changing attitudes.

Industrial reform (domain of Industry ministry) was as path breaking as the trade policy reform (contained in the budget). PM decided that Industrial delicensing was to be announced separately from the budget on the same day when Budget was to be presented.

Some people opine that the decision to announce industrial policy on the morning of the budget was entirely Rao’s, and entirely Machiavellian. This was before the days of twenty-four-hour news and the Internet, and the day’s reforms would first be reported only in the next morning’s newspapers. Rao deliberately kept his industrial policy announcement for the morning of the budget, the theory goes, so that newspapers would focus on the evening budget, rather than the more politically sensitive overhaul of industrial policy.

24 July 1991
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24 July 1991 was a hot day, and as parliamentarians streamed into the sandstone Parliament, they expected an evening of fireworks.

The show began even sooner. At around 12.50 p.m., the minister of state for industry, P.J. Kurien, got up to make a bland announcement in the Lok Sabha. Given the weight of what he was going to table, the industry minister should have presented the document. But Rao wanted no part in it. Instead, his deputy got up and said, ‘Sir, I beg to lay on the table a statement (Hindi and English versions) on Industrial Policy.’

This innocuous declaration masked the profoundly radical policy he had just announced. Its most famous sentence was that ‘industrial licensing will henceforth be abolished for all industries, except those specified, irrespective of levels of investment’. The exceptions were just eighteen industries mentioned in the annex to the policy (which have since been whittled down even further). It also limited public sector monopolies to eight sectors. The second change was to end the official phobia towards large companies by easing anti-monopoly restrictions. The third change was to raise the permitted level of foreign investment from 40 per cent after government approval to upto 51 per cent in thirty-four industries with ‘automatic approval’. This was the single most radical economic document in independent India’s history, and it was announced without fanfare.

A few hours later, Manmohan Singh, wearing a light Nehru jacket and with the red budget briefcase beside him, got up from his seat in the treasury benches in Parliament to deliver the speech of his life. The apolitical Manmohan Singh began by confessing that he was ‘overpowered by a strange sense of loneliness’. He missed the ‘handsome, smiling face’ of Rajiv Gandhi. The speech would be peppered with other references to the very family whose ideology the budget was reversing. His next rhetorical tactic was to play up the financial crisis, claiming that it was raising prices on the poor. ‘The crisis in the economy is both acute and deep. We have not experienced anything similar in the history of independent India.’ In the beginning of the speech itself, Manmohan had cited Rajiv Gandhi as well as the poor—sugar-coating meant to mask the bitter medicine in the rest of the budget.

Over the next few hours, Singh overhauled the import-export policy, pushed for export promotion, slashed import licensing, and reduced tariffs.

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Narasimha Rao and Manmohan Singh followed up the big bangs of July 1991 with short bursts that were kept muffled from the media. As the political scientist Robert Jenkins explains, the aim in each sector was ‘Gradual reform
. . . using less transparent means of initiating change in an effort to avoid direct political confrontation as long as possible.’ The foreign investment promotion board was set up soon after the budget. Run directly from the prime minister’s office, it facilitated the flow of foreign investment. The months that followed saw further changes to anti-monopoly laws and reduction in tariffs. The government also shut down many of the Kafkaesque instruments of economic control, such as the secretariat of industrial approvals, the directorate-general of technical approvals.

Perhaps the best evidence that economic reform was not just a straightforward response to calamity is what happened after the crisis ended. Narasimha Rao did not have the excuse of a looming catastrophe after mid-1992. Big business, opposition parties, the Congress, and Left intellectuals could now force the Rao government to declare mission accomplished, and pedal back to the failed policies of the past—until the next financial crisis.

Without further liberalization, the reforms made so far would also be meaningless. While formal restrictions on Indian and foreign entrepreneurs had been eased, the complexity of doing business in India meant that government hand-holding was still necessary. The revolutions in transport, communications and consumer goods were yet to take place, and the first private airline yet to take off. But with no crisis to justify his reforms after 1992, Narasimha Rao could well have chosen to abandon liberalization midway.

In his first year as prime minister, Narasimha Rao had implemented his economic goals by deft use of looming catastrophe. With the crisis over by 1992, he needed new upayas. The ‘big bang’ reforms of 1991—devaluation,
delicensing, trade liberalization—had formally opened up the economy. But industry still needed government help to navigate the hurdles that remained.

The licence raj had also created distinct vested interests in different sectors of the economy. For example, any attempt to privatize banks would symbolically overturn Indira Gandhi’s bank nationalization drive. Ideological
critics would see red, while bank unions would organize to protect their sinecure. Deepening the capital markets, on the other hand, would be opposed by unscrupulous brokers prospering from the status quo. The same variation in adversaries existed in infrastructure. Road-building had fewer opponents, while electricity reforms would be contested by powerful interest groups—the coal mafia, state power boards and customers. A whole new set of critics would protest the opening up of television and consumer goods, worried that traditional India was being westernized.

The BJP, communists and the Congress had their own complaints against liberalization. The BJP’s trader base welcomed delicensing, but was wary of foreign competition. The communists opposed both, while the Congress party
was sensitive to charges of elitism that went against the grain of Nehruvian socialism.

On economic reforms, Narasimha Rao and Manmohan Singh had proved exquisite opening batsmen. By 1992, however, liberalization was entering the middle overs. A range of subtler, incremental techniques were needed to deal
with concerns unique to each sector, unique to each party. Would Rao be able to play spin as well as pace?

(sources for the above article, with grateful acknowledgement:(1)”Half Lion”-by Vinay Sitapati, (2)”To the brink and back”-Jairam Ramesh, (3) “Backstage-the story behind India’s high growth years”-By Montek Singh Ahluwalia and many other sources).

We know the answer by now. Such a robust economic setup was established by P V Narsimha Rao and his team that even other parties, after winning elections, started talking and acting in the same language. For example, his party lost the next Parliament election, and before that the assembly election in Andhra Pradesh. But the parties that came to power continued the new economic policy. In Andhra Pradesh in fact, ChandraBabu Naidu became well known for his policies, which attracted enormous amount of foreign investment in his state and Made Hyderabad an important IT hub. The liberalised economy began to pay off dividends as time passed.

Today, more than three decades later, we all are reaping the benefits of an economy that has grown big, strong and resilient. It has helped India gain respect in the world. While there are still countries that repeatedly go to IMF and never learn their lessons, India learnt its lesson in 1991 and never looked back since.

24 July 1991 was the day, when the seeds of all these major reforms were sown. Today 32 years have passed. 24 July 1991 was followed by 11 May 1998. Together the happenings of these two days changed the destiny of India.

So, let us remember this date- 24 July 1991. It was this day that India, a sleeping elephant, woke up and began to stand on its feet. Today the elephant is wide awake and is walking along merrily.

As stated earlier, we do not have any movie called 24 July. We do have a movie called 25 July. A song from this movie was covered just yesterday. This movie was released in 1951 and so it had no relations with 24 July 1991. But to my mind, this movie name comes closest to the date we are discussing. Moreover, this movie is a long forgotten movie, just as the date of 24 july 1991 is long forgotten by most people. So I have decided to cover a song from this movie with this post.

25^th july had six songs in it. Two songs have been covered in the past. The remaining songs are rare songs and searching for them is going to be a tall order.

Here is the third song from the movie. This song was uploaded by the uploader of rare songs Zaif bhai (whom our Sudhir Jee knows very well). This song is sung by Binota Chakraborty. B M Sharma is the lyricist. Music is composed by Nachiketa Ghosh.

I heard this song for the first time today. Imagine a song recorded in 1951 being heard for the first time 72 years later ! The song may be forgotten, but it sounds like a nice song to listen to.

Song-Na din ko chain aur na shab ko qaraar hai (25th July)(1951) Singer-Binota Chakraborty, Lyrics-B M Sharma, MD-Nachiketa Ghosh

Lyrics

Na din ko chain
aur na shab ko qaraar hai
na din ko chain
aur na shab ko qaraar hai
aa mast aankhon waale tera
aa mast aankhon waale tera
intzaar hai
na din ko chain
aur na shab ko qaraar hai

ye angdaaiyaan
haaye dil ki bekaraariyaan
ye angdaaiyaan
haaye dil ki bekaraariyaan
har thhandi aah mein chhupi huyi
har thhandi aah mein chhupi huyi
dil ki pukaar hai ae ae
dil ki pukaar hai ae ae ae
na din ko chain
aur na shab ko qaraar hai

gulshan e dil mein khile ulfat ke phool hain
har phool ko teri kasam
tujhse pyaar hai
gulshan e dil mein khile ulfat ke phool hain
har phool ko teri kasam
tujhse pyaar hai
chhotee si zindagee mein
door door rahen kyun oon oon
chhotee si zindagee mein
door door rahen kyun oon oon
aa jaa ke mulaaqaat ko
aa jaa ke mulaaqaat ko
dil beqaraar hai ae ae
dil beqaraar hai ae ae ae
na din ko chain
aur na shab ko qaraar hai
na din ko chain
aur na shab ko qaraar hai