That of all the 14 Prime Ministers having assumed office in independent India, PV Narasimha Rao stands out distinctly as the only one who knew the art of computer programming!
He got his son to send him a computer from the US, hired a tutor to learn the intricacies of the machine and went on to write code in BASIC, COBOL & UNIX! How cool is that?
Rao was a modern day Chanakya who led India through crucial times building the nation as we know it today, all the while making a mark as a distinguished scholar as well.
He was a polyglot who knew 17 different languages in all including 9 Indian and 8 foreign ones but guess what, human languages were not the only ones he excelled at but also computer languages as well which were popular at that time.
Back in 1984, the incumbent PM, Rajiv Gandhi in one of his meetings remarked that he intended to open up electronics and computer imports to India. ‘But the old guard in my party will not understand,’ is what he had said to make his contempt for his defence minister, Rao, apparent who was at a ripe age of 63 then.
Computers were just a novelty then - even in the US where researchers were at the forefront pounding away at all of the possibilities a beast like this could unleash. The prime minister wanted it in India and thought old fogies like Rao would impede the induction of new technologies.
But what Rajiv didn't know was Rao’s voracious appetite for learning. That evening, he called up his son, Prabhakara, an engineer in the US. ‘You keep talking about this computer thing. What is it? Send me one,’ Rao said. The next day, Prabhakara sent a prototype to Delhi. Prabhakara also hired a computer specialist to teach his father. Ever the technophile, Rao bought manuals to read on his own, and within fifteen days, told the specialist he was redundant. Over the years, Rao would master two computer languages, COBOL and BASIC, and would also go on to write code in the mainframe operating system UNIX.
Not sure if even Rajiv Gandhi, who is touted as the one who brought the IT revolution in India, could ever do that himself. It was only a matter of time then before Rajiv had to concede ground and Rao became indispensable.
He had a personal interest in these machines as a little later in his life as PM, he would wake up at 5 a.m. in his bungalow at the race course road, his official residence as the prime minister, would walk to the adjoining room and fiddle with his computer until the newspapers arrived at 6 a.m. where he use to type his reflections on that period in his life in a digital diary he maintained on his computer, which remain to this day private.
His personal interest in computers is also evident from one of his public speeches while inaugurating the IT-ASIA conference where he could not resist lodging a customer complaint: ‘I use one package of word processing. For years the upgrades are coming and when I look into the literature of what the upgrade means . . . I find very little difference . . . I think we should be careful about these things. You skip four upgrades, maybe the fifth will be really useful to you. It will mean a real upgrade. Pardon me, saying so. This has happened to me.’
For me, he remains the best PM we could ever afford till date who built the 'New India' as we know it today.