The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones.” That was Mark Antony’s lament, in Julius Caesar. To be sure, we all have our list of evil-doers, the bad boys of our contemporary history—VK Krishna Menon as defence minister (and Antony was right in this case, the good that Menon did is not remembered!), Sanjay Gandhi (only Khushwant Singh remembers his good deeds), Mohan Kumaramangalam (for sundry nationalisation decisions, supersession of Supreme Court judges, calls for a committed bureaucracy), and so on. I wonder, though. Everyone remembers PV Narasimha Rao for leading the minority government that launched the economic reforms programme, for introducing India’s ‘Look East’ initiative in foreign affairs after the Soviet Union collapsed, and other such initiatives. Who remembers that he was...
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