DOES INDIA NEED ANOTHER NARASIMHA RAO.??

It was an mundane Thursday morning at Thane station today, where I was all set to catch my usual 9:04 local, fully armed with a copy of ET in my hand (a mark of a true MBA..!!) & determined to grab a window seat so that I cud comfortably complete an hour long journey to my Fort office. After getting my privileged seat, I somehow struggled to go through the paper flooded with news on fuel hike & how the Government is desperately trying to avoid itself from becoming a scapegoat, the bloodbath at BSE which I myself was witnessing yesterday afternoon while standing in front of BSE building next to my office. With crucial national issues like 123 nuke agreement hanging in air and a somewhat confused foreign policy approach towards China (especially over the North-East region issue) and the recent hike in fuel prices which came very late & cover merely 10% of loses, showing the clear intention of the government to limp for the next 12 months & live it to the next government to grapple with the issue; it somehow reminds me the black days of 1991 when India was facing the worst economic crisis since independence & was about to default in her international commitment to pay back the debts, the previous Government led by S Chandrasekhar had to pledge gold to pay the debts and inflation was going out of control. Mr Narasimha Rao (also referred to as Chanakya) was about to retire from politics when fate – in the tragic form of assassination of Rajiv Gandhi – made him the Prime Minister of India. Like an veteran warrior he could sense the enemy in the form of an catastrophic economic crisis approaching into and appointed a bureaucrat Dr Manmohan Singh as his Finance Minister. Even though he had an option to choose from an army of senior Congress leaders. But he selected a non politician at the crucial juncture of Indian history and it was this one tough choice that made all the difference. Rao shrewdly steered his minority government to give Singh all the political support he needed to push his reforms. The importance of which can now be understood from the fact that Dr Singh as Prime Minister now is struggling to push even small economic reforms as he is not getting enough political support and his own UPA allies & Left are all set with their guns targeted on him. Rao excelled on various fronts also as the Prime Minister. His Government was instrumental in bringing peace back in Punjab. In the defense front he made all the ground work to make India a nuclear power – even though credit of actual nuclear test went to his successor Atal Bihari Vajpayee (According to Vajpayee, when he became the PM in 1996 Rao handed him a piece of paper which simply stated 'Bomb is ready. You can go ahead.' (referring to a nuclear device) and asked that it should not be made public. Vajpayee revealed this only after Rao's death. Rao launched the Look East foreign policy, which brought India closer to ASEAN. He decided to maintain a distance from the Dalai Lama in order to avoid aggravating Beijing's suspicions and concerns, and made successful overtures to Teheran. The 'cultivate Iran' policy was pushed through vigorously by him. These policies paid rich dividends for India in March 1994, when Benazir Bhutto's efforts to have a resolution passed by the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva on the human rights situation in Jammu and Kashmir failed, with opposition by China and Iran. Its only bcoz of the economic liberalization(which Mr.Rao turned into reality) that today even a 12th pass can dare to dream of earning a 30k salary. All these thoughts forced me to close my eyes and think for a moment if any Leader in the current political scenario some avatar of Mr Rao who has the vision and the capability to take tough decisions when it mattered the most...Well only time will tell...!!!

With these thoughts racing through my mind... Just thought of sharing it with you people...!!

What do you ppl think abt it.????

With all that...this is ajay signing off..!!