- Lived:
- born 28 June 1921 in Laknepalli village, Warangal district, in the Nizam's Hyderabad State (today's Telangana); raised in Vangara; a life spent between Hyderabad, the Andhra countryside and Delhi; died 23 December 2004 in New Delhi
- Field:
- politics and statecraft — the Congress party; Prime Minister of India, 1991–96 — and, in parallel, Telugu letters: translator, novelist, scholar of languages
- The Big Idea:
- With the treasury nearly empty, no majority in Parliament and no mandate for change, he dismantled in weeks the licence-permit system that had governed Indian business for forty years — supplying the politics that made India's economic opening possible.
- In their words:
- "Not taking a decision is also a decision" — the maxim endlessly quoted of him, usually as mockery, which he wore as method.
- If you remember one thing:
- The most consequential Indian reform of the twentieth century's end was carried out by a 70-year-old scholar who had already packed his books for retirement — and who understood that in a country as argumentative as India, the deepest changes are the ones announced most quietly.