Aiyar had supported the budget, contending that it conformed to Rajiv Gandhi’s beliefs on what needed to be done to stave off the financial crisis.Bowing to pressure from the party, Singh had agreed to lower the 40 per cent increase in fertiliser prices to 30 per cent but had left the hike in LPG and petrol prices untouched.The Cabinet Committee on Political Affairs met twice on August 4 and 5, 1991, to decide on the statement Singh would make in the Lok Sabha on August 6.”The statement dropped the idea of a rollback, which had been demanded over the past few days but now spoke of protecting the interests of small and marginal farmers,” Ramesh said in his book.”Both sides had won. The party had forced a rethink but the fundamentals of what the government wanted — the decontrol of prices of fertilisers other than urea and an increase in urea prices — had been preserved,” he recounted.”This was political economy at its constructive best — a textbook example of how the government and the party can collaborate to create a win-win situation for both,” he added in the book.
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