Lee accused Narasimha Rao of ‘holding back Manmohan Singh’. The finance minister had told him as much, he said. That was one reason why he visited India in 1996 when the BJP was gaining ground as the Congress government became bogged down in corruption scandals. He went back in 2005 when Manmohan Singh was prime minister, and twice in 2007. Keeping in close touch with Indian affairs all through those years, he was impressed by the spectacular strides India made in IT and space research but continued to regret the drawback of her poor infrastructure. He watched Rajiv Gandhi's son Rahul blossom into a political aspirant, and thought Bombay could match Shanghai as an autonomous growth centre. His regard for Manmohan Singh increased. But Lee is convinced that it was under Atal Behari Vajpayee that India at last forged ahead to provide the alternative that would ensure China did not ‘squeeze’ Singapore. Less logically, he is also convinced that Vajpayee opposed reform until he went to China.

The BJP was largely to blame for these misunderstandings. Lee found in 1996 that Advani and Vajpayee denied their own economic faith. Capitalizing on the realization that far from wishing away poverty overnight, liberalization entailed considerable hardship, the BJP leaders were accusing Congress of selling out to foreigners. When Manmohan Singh reported similar allegations in happier times, Narasimha Rao had shot back insouciantly, ‘Who would want to buy this country anyway?’ Now he reacted with panicky gestures like a food grains subsidy which Lee deplored. Reports reached him of Manmohan Singh's unhappiness with his leader, and a worried Goh asked Lee to find out how things were shaping. ‘I thought Narasimha Rao needed to be encouraged. So I went there,’ Lee says. It was eight years since the last visit which he had made as prime minister.

High Commissioner Prem Singh, who was close to the BJP and toying with the idea of giving up diplomacy to stand for the Lok Sabha, thinks another reason for going was to get a feel of the BJP.