Refresh @10 - II

IT was time for the 2002 Gujarat Assembly elections in the back drop of the Godhra episode. I was assigned an interview on the economic costs of riots with Manu Shroff, a former editor of The Economic Times who was then retired and residing in Vadodara. It so happened that his neighbour was IG Patel, former Governor of Reserve Bank of India, former IIM-A Principal, former Director London School of Economics and much more. Fondly called IG by his near and dear ones, Patel too was spending his retirement years in the calmer confines of Vadodara, his home town. As I sat with Shroff, almost taking dictations on his analysis of riots’ impact, IG walked in. The two were thick friends. IG almost looked rural in a white half sleeves out-shirt and a dark pants. As I was introduced the duo got more talkative. It was tea time. So the interview became a long winding three way conversation with my inputs limited to stories of the scale of riots. As the focus shifted from Shroff to IG, he came into story telling narration mode and landed a scoop of memoirs in my lap. 

One fine evening of 1991, IG sat over dinner with a guest from Delhi – a former friend from his Cambridge days. It was incidentally IG's birthday as well. Just then his phone rang. It was PMO on the other side. The voice told IG that Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao wanted to talk to him and he was connected. Now this is as told by IG – “…Rao wanted me to take over as the Finance Minister in his cabinet. He was looking for a technocrat as the nation’s economy was in doldrums. He even offered that I take the next day’s flight and land in Delhi. But I was already in retirement mode. I knew what life in Delhi can be. The bureaucracy can be stifling. Then this thought stuck me. My guest was familiar with Finance ministry bureaucracy in and out. He had been in RBI. He was a noted economist. I suggested why not him?...” Rest as they say is history. The guest of IG that fateful day was Sardar Manmohan Singh – now India’s longest serving non-Gandhi Prime Minister!