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Rajiv Gandhi (20 Aug 1944 - 21 May 1991)
Rajiv Gandhi was the youngest Prime Minister of India. He became Prime
Minister at the age of 40. Rajiv Gandhi came from a family that had great
political lineage. He was the eldest son of Indira and Feroze Gandhi. Her mother
Indira Gandhi and grandfather Jawaharlal Nehru were Prime Ministers of India. As
a Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi made a valuable contribution in modernizing Indian
administration. He had the vision and foresight to see that information
technology will play a key role in the 21 century and worked actively to develop
India's capacity in this realm.
Rajiv Gandhi was born on August 20, 1944 in Bombay (Mumbai) in India's most
famous political family. His grandfather Jawaharlal Nehru played a stellar role
in India's freedom struggle and became independent India's first Prime Minister.
His parents lived separately and Rajiv Gandhi was raised at his grandfather's
home where her mother lived. Rajeev Gandhi did his schooling from the elite Doon
school and then studied at the University of London and at Trinity College,
Cambridge in Britain. At Cambridge, Rajiv Ghandi met and fell in love with an
Italian student Sonia Maino and they got married in 1969.
Returning to India, Rajeev Ghandi became a commercial airline pilot. His younger
brother Sanjay Gandhi entered politics and became a trusted lieutenant of her
mother Indira Gandhi. After Sanjay's death in a plane crash in 1980, Rajiv
reluctantly entered politics at the instance of his mother. He won his first Lok
Sabha election in 1981 from Amethi-the erstwhile constituency of his brother.
Soon he became the General Secretary of the Congress Party. After the
assassination of Indira Gandhi in October 1984 he became the Prime Minister of
India at the age of 40. He called for general elections in 1984 and riding on a
massive sympathy wave led Congress to a thumping victory. Congress garnered 80
percent of the seats in the lower house and achieved its greatest victory since
independence.
In his initial days as Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi was immensely popular.
During his tenure as Prime Minister of India, he brought a certain dynamism to
the premiership, which had always been occupied by older people. He is credited
with promoting the introduction of computers in India. Prime Minister Rajiv
Gandhi began leading in a direction significantly different from Indira Gandhi's
socialism. He improved bilateral relations with the United States and expanded
economic and scientific cooperation. He increased government support for science
and technology and associated industries, and reduced import quotas, taxes and
tariffs on technology-based industries, especially computers, airlines, defence
and telecommunications. He worked towards reducing the red tape in the
governance and freeing administration from bureaucratic tangles. In 1986, Rajiv
Gandhi announced a national education policy to modernize and expand higher
education programs across India.
Rajiv Gandhi authorised an extensive police and army campaign against the
militants in Punjab. Rajiv's government suffered a major setback when its
efforts to broker peace between the Government of Sri Lanka and the LTTE rebels
backfired. As per the peace accords signed in 1987, the LTTE would disarm to the
Indian Peace Keeping Force which was sent to Sri Lanka. But distrust and a few
incidents of conflict broke out into open fighting between the LTTE militants
and Indian soldiers. Over a thousand Indian soldiers were killed, and at last
Rajiv Gandhi had to pull out Indian forces from Sri Lanka. It was a failure of
Rajiv's diplomacy.
Although Rajeev Gandhi promised to end corruption, he and his party were
themselves implicated in corruption scandals. The major scandal being Bofors Gun
scandal involving alleged payoffs by the Swedish Bofors arms company. The
scandal rapidly eroded his popularity and he lost the next general elections
held in 1989. A coalition comprising government came to the power but it could
not last its full term and general elections were called in 1991. While
campaigning for elections in Sriperumbudur, Tamil Nadu, Rajiv Gandhi was
assassinated on May 21, 1991 by a suicide bomber belonging to LTTE.