Rao's career is the ideal window through which to understand how India became a force in the global economy almost overnight. Assuming power over an ossified, quasi-socialist economy burdened by inefficient industrial behemoths, Rao was instrumental in driving through a broad set of liberalizing economic reforms that transformed India. With exclusive access to Rao's never-before-seen personal papers as well as over a hundred interviews, Vinay Sitapati's definitive biography tells the story of India's makeover in the 1990s and the story of the Deng Xiaoping-like figure who did it. Few world leaders have achieved so much with so little power. Yet, Rao was not just able to last a full five years as Prime Minister, he reinvented India, at home and abroad. Yet because he was unloved by his people and mistrusted by his own party-a minority in Parliament and ruling under the shadow of Sonia Gandhi-Rao lacked the mandate to combat these crises. Narasimha Rao became the unlikely prime minister of India in 1991, he inherited economic catastrophe, violent insurgencies and a nation adrift.
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