Pamulaparthi Venkata Narasimha Rao (28 June 1921 – 23 December 2004) was an Indian independence activist, lawyer, and politician from the Indian National Congress who served as the prime minister of India from 1991 to 1996. He was the first person from South India and the second person from a non-Hindi speaking background to be prime minister. He is known for his role in initiating India's economic liberalisation following an economic crisis in 1991, a process that has been sustained and expanded by every successive prime minister of the country.
Prior to his premiership, he served as the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh, and later also held high-order portfolios of the union government, such as Defence, Home Affairs and External Affairs. In 1991 Indian general election, the Indian National Congress led by him, won 244 seats, and thereafter, he, along with external support from other parties, formed a minority government with him being the prime minister.As prime minister, Rao adopted to avert the impending 1991 economic crisis, the reforms progressed furthest in the areas of opening up to foreign investment, reforming capital markets, deregulating domestic business, and reforming the trade regime. Trade reforms and changes in the regulation of foreign direct investment were introduced to open India to foreign trade while stabilising external loans.
In 2024, he was posthumously awarded the Bharat Ratna, India's highest civilian award, by the government of India. In 2025, his portrait was unveiled at Raj Bhavan on the eve of his birth anniversary by the Governor of Telangana Jishnu Dev Varma.
P. V. Narasimha Rao was born on 28 June 1921 in a Telugu family in the village of Laknepalli village of Narsampet mandal, Warangal district of present-day Telangana (then part of Hyderabad State). His father Sitarama Rao and mother Rukma Bai hailed from agrarian families. Later, he was adopted by Pamulaparthi Ranga Rao and Rukminamma and brought to Vangara, a village in Bheemadevarpalle mandal of present-day Hanamkonda district in Telangana when he was three years old. Popularly known as P. V., he completed part of his primary education in Katkuru village of Bheemdevarapalli mandal in Hanamkonda district by staying in his relative Gabbeta Radhakishan Rao's house and studying for his bachelor's degree in the Arts college at the Osmania University. He was part of Vande Mataram movement in the late 1930s in the Hyderabad State. He later went on to Hislop College, now under Nagpur University, where he completed a master's degree in law. He completed his law from Fergusson College in Pune of the University of Bombay (now Mumbai).
Along with his distant cousin Pamulaparthi Sadasiva Rao, Ch. Raja Narendra and Devulapalli Damodar Rao, P. V. edited a Telugu weekly magazine called Kakatiya Patrika in the 1940s. Both P. V. and Sadasiva Rao contributed articles under the pen-name Jaya-Vijaya. He served as the Chairman of the Telugu Academy in Andhra Pradesh from 1968 to 1974.
He had wide interests in a variety of subjects (other than politics), such as literature and computer software (including computer programming). He was a polyglot and spoke 17 languages.
Rao died in 2004 of a heart attack in New Delhi. He was cremated in Hyderabad.
Rao was an active freedom fighter during the Indian Independence movement and joined full-time politics after independence as a member of the Indian National Congress. He served as an elected representative for Andhra Pradesh State Assembly from 1957 to 1977. He served in various ministerial positions in Andhra government from 1962 to 1973. He became the Chief minister of Andhra Pradesh in 1971 and implemented land reforms and land ceiling acts strictly. He secured reservations for lower castes in politics during his tenure. President's rule had to be imposed to counter the Jai Andhra movement during his tenure.
He supported Indira Gandhi in the formation of the New Congress party in 1969 by splitting the Indian National Congress. This was later regrouped as Congress (I) party in 1978. He served as Member of Parliament, Lok Sabha from Andhra Pradesh. He rose to national prominence for handling several diverse portfolios, most significantly Home, Defence and Foreign Affairs, in the cabinets of both Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi. He served as Foreign minister from 1980 to 1984 and then from 1988 to 1989. In fact, it is speculated that he was in the running for the post of India's President along with Zail Singh in 1982.
Rao very nearly retired from politics in 1991. He was the Indian National Congress President from 29 May 1991– Sept.1996. It was the assassination of the Congress President Rajiv Gandhi that persuaded him to make a comeback. As the Congress had won the largest number of seats in the 1991 elections, he had an opportunity to head the minority government as Prime Minister. He was the first person outside the Nehru–Gandhi family to serve as Prime Minister for five continuous years, the first to hail from the State of Telangana, and also the first from Southern India. Since Rao had not contested the general elections, he then participated in a by-election in Nandyal to join the parliament. Rao won from Nandyal with a victory margin of a record 5 lakh (500,000) votes, and his win was recorded in the Guinness Book Of World Records; later on, in 1996, he was MP from Berhampur, Ganjam District, Odisha. His cabinet included Sharad Pawar, himself a strong contender for the Prime Minister's post, as Defence Minister. He also broke a convention by appointing a non-political economist and future prime minister, Manmohan Singh as his Finance Minister. He also appointed Subramanian Swamy, an opposition party (Janata Party) member as the Chairman of the Commission on Labour Standards and International Trade. This has been the only instance that an opposition party member was given a Cabinet rank post by the ruling party. He also sent opposition leader Atal Bihari Vajpayee, to represent India in a UN meeting at Geneva.
Narasimha Rao won elections from different parts of India such as Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and Odisha.
Prime Minister of India (1991–1996)
Adopted to avert the impending 1991 economic crisis, the reforms progressed furthest in the areas of opening up to foreign investment, reforming capital markets, deregulating domestic business, and reforming the trade regime. Rao's government's goals were reducing the fiscal deficit, privatisation of the public sector and increasing investment in infrastructure. Trade reforms and changes in the regulation of foreign direct investment were introduced to open India to foreign trade while stabilising external loans. Rao wanted I. G. Patel as his Finance Minister. Patel was an official who helped prepare 14 budgets, an ex-governor of the Reserve Bank of India and had headed The London School of Economics. But Patel declined. Rao then chose Manmohan Singh for the job. Manmohan Singh, an acclaimed economist, played a central role in implementing these reforms.
Major reforms in India's capital markets led to an influx of foreign portfolio investment. The major economic policies adopted by Rao include:
Abolishing in 1992 the Controller of Capital Issues which decided the prices and number of shares that firms could issue.
Introducing the SEBI Act of 1992 and the Security Laws (Amendment) which gave SEBI the legal authority to register and regulate all security market intermediaries.
Opening up in 1992 of India's equity markets to investment by foreign institutional investors and permitting Indian firms to raise capital on international markets by issuing Global Depository Receipts (GDRs).
Starting in 1994 of the National Stock Exchange as a computer-based trading system which served as an instrument to leverage reforms of India's other stock exchanges. The NSE emerged as India's largest exchange by 1996.