Recently the NDA Govt has taken a decision to have a memorial built for our forgotten former Prime Minister Mr PV NarasimhaRao, in New Delhi,which is very much a laudable one. Mrs Soniaji has to hang their heads in shame as their own leader who backed nuclear testing, ushered in liberal reforms and played a pivotal role in look east policy has been denied a proper place in history. And credit goes to Mr Narendra Modi and one should be happy that at least after a decade of his death Memorial will be built in Delhi. But the fact of the matter is Mr Naidu APCM must have certainly put lot efforts in this since he is shrewd politician, having an eye on Bharat Ratna for NTR, must have tried to avoid conflict of interest between PV & NTR. He has been trying hard for Bharat Ratna for NTR while KCR of course made out a case for PV's BharatRatna. Now we have see how far KCR would succeed vis a vis his AP counter part Naidu. The point to ponder is that in New Delhi it has streets named after all and sundry from conquerors to councillors and it is also a fact that at least 3 members of his cabinet Mr Arjun Singh, Mr MadhavRao Scindia and Mr Rajesh pilot ,each have street named after them but not for PV.
His Finance Minister Mr Manmohan Singh respectfully paid tributes to him every year during his Prime Minister ship. But his Govt was neither able to build a memorial nor was able to award him with nation's highest honour, which he richly deserved for his contribution to the economic and foreign policies. But surprisingly the move to honour him had been sponsored by non congress Govts of AP &TS.
Since Mr P V was able to provide strong political leadership to the nation at a particularly difficult situation in the recent history he deserves more when compared to others .
He had demonstrated greater political courage in advocating and leading the new economic policy which came into being in the year 1980's, than his predecessor Mr Rajiv and it was without doubt an architect of India's foreign policy. We all have seen him that as Minister for Industries he signed the famous Industrial Statement Policy of July 24th 1991 which ended license, permit and quota Raj. As all of us know that Mr PV went beyond liberating Indian enterprise from bureaucratic hassles, celebrated its rise and he was the one to award Bharat Ratna to most deserving business leader JRD Tata in 1992.
The only blot on his prime ministership was the demolition of Babri Masjid. He had been a consensual leader who befriended all and reached out to all opposition leaders at any point of time. He was not flawless but which leader is? Inspite of his failings nor mistakes he still deserved the highest honour in addition to the proposed memorial.
