The Disruptor (How Vishwanath Pratap Singh Shook India)

VISHWANATH PRATAP SINGH, India's seventh Prime Minister, struck Indian politics with the force of a tornado. Primarily remembered for implementing the recommendations of the Mandal Commission report, which provided reservations in Central government services for the first time to the Other Backward Classes, he deserves a place in history for much more-from conducting raids on the biggest business houses of his time when he was finance minister to investigating murky defence deals as defence minister (which cost him his job); from bringing together a divided Opposition to form an unlikely coalition government at the Centre comprising the BJP and the communist parties to spearheading the biggest airlift evacuation Indian history-of Indians stranded in Kuwait during the first Gulf War.

V.P. Singh weathered repeated crises during his eleven- month prime ministerial tenure: the rise of insurgency in Kashmir, starting with the kidnapping of his home minister's daughter by terrorists; L.K. Advani's rath yatra in support of the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya, which led to communal riots; and, above all, the backlash that followed the Mandal Commission report's implementation.

Known for his integrity and honesty, V.P. Singh ended up antagonizing both the Congress and the BJP-perhaps one of the reasons he has not been given the posthumous attention he deserves. The Disruptor is a richly detailed account of his extraordinarily eventful life, told in the context of his times.

DEBASHISH MUKERJI was a journalist for nearly forty years, working with numerous publications, including The Hindustan Times, The Week and Business Today. He has written extensively on Uttar Pradesh and on national politics.

Unlike many others in his family, Vishwanath Pratap Singh had little faith in astrology or palmistry. His father and eldest brother were not only staunch believers but also practised both; V.P. Singh, however, claimed he was never curious about either. 'It was because I found that many predictions turn out wrong," he said. "The wrong ones are never remembered, only the correct ones are!" Yet, there was one prediction by their family astrologer, his wife Sita Kumari Singh revealed, which he often recalled in his last years. 'He had forecast that my husband would reach many high positions, but would not last long in any of them,' she said.

It had indeed turned out that way. V.P. Singh's political career advanced at a blistering pace through the 1980s. He became Uttar Pradesh chief minister, Union commerce minister, Union finance minister, Union defence minister and finally Prime Minister-all in the space of a decade. Earlier, he had also been deputy minister- and subsequently minister of state-for commerce from October 1974 to March 1977. But his tenure in each of these offices was short. The first in the commerce ministry, at two years and five months-promoted to minister of state for the last three- eventually proved to have been the longest.

His stint as UP chief minister lasted exactly two years, from June 1980 to June 1982. He was commerce minister for just a year and seven months, from January 1983 to August 1984. His high- profile finance ministry tenure under Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi again ran for precisely two years, from January 1985 to January 1987, when he was moved to the defence ministry, from which he resigned in less than three months. Finally, his prime ministerial term, starting 2 December 1989, ended in only eleven months.

And yet, in each of his last three positions-as finance minister and defence minister in the Rajiv Gandhi-led Congress government, and Prime Minister in the subsequent Janata Dal government-as well as in the two-and-a-half-year interval when he held no official position at all, some of V.P. Singh's actions changed the course of Indian political history.

The best-remembered of these actions is undoubtedly his introduction, as Prime Minister, of 27 per cent reservation in Central government services for the socially and educationally backward classes, or other backward classes (OBCs), identified on the basis of caste. The Indian Constitution, adopted in 1950, seeking to correct the inequalities in Hindu society created over millennia by its caste system, had provided reservations for Scheduled Castes (SCs) and Scheduled Tribes (STs), but not for OBCs. V.P. Singh's announcement, on 7 August 1990, drawing on the recommendations in the report of the Second Backward Classes Commission, chaired by Bindeshwari Prasad Mandal, remains the single-biggest step towards affirmative action in the country thereafter.

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