India's Prime Ministers Survivor - Lal Bahadur Shastri is our Survivor !

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Indira

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Atal Bihari Vajpayee

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Atal Bihari Vajpayee

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Atal Bihari Vajpayee

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Atal Bihari Vajpayee

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Rajiv

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Since this is an India General Discussion thread, I'll share my predictions.

The Congress will crash and burn. In 2014, the results will show a decisive rejection of the Congress, but not much beyond that. The NDA is too narrow to win a majority on itself; as a result, there will be governmental instability of the sort that is generally seen in India when the Congress is out of power. The Prime Minister will change frequently, shifting between left and right; Varun's name will be brought up every time, but he will not become Prime Minister at any point. At the next election, Rahul and the Congress will be swept back into power.

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Rajiv

Nobody is interested in my predictions?

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Rajiv

Why no love for Rajiv?

I have a general dislike of monarchs and monarchy.

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Rajiv

You can't eliminate Nehru. He is India.

I went to India twice, back in 1994 and 1997: maybe it has distorted my view on Rao and Manmohan Singh !

Where did you go?

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You can't eliminate Nehru. He is India.

Unfortunately, you are correct. He did a lot of good of course, but his economic policies made sure India didn't grow the way a developing economy should.

Oh, there was certainly a lot of harm done by him and his successors in the name of socialism. But India's democracy owes its existence to him, and that trumps all.

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You can't eliminate Nehru. He is India.

Unfortunately, you are correct. He did a lot of good of course, but his economic policies made sure India didn't grow the way a developing economy should.

Oh, there was certainly a lot of harm done by him and his successors in the name of socialism. But India's democracy owes its existence to him, and that trumps all.

Sure, but what he did could have been done by someone else. He deserves credit for it of course, but it's not as if there were many leaders out there who wanted to form a dictatorship. The best thing he did was start to abolish the zamindar system. That is probably the biggest reason why democracy has been able to flourish through all these years in India.

You know the saying: the road to hell is paved with good intentions. What India did in creating a stable, democratic society is more or less unprecedented.

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Rajiv

Nehru before his unqualified grandson? Really?

Rajiv Gandhi

To Xahar:
I was a trainee at the French embassy and so was a bit forced to stay in Delhi, but I went around in the triangle Delhi-Agra-Jaipur and I visited Varanasi and stopped a bit in Lucknow.
No Kolkata,no Mumbai, no Madras, no Pondicherry () and no South...
I came back with the certainty that India will take a long, long, long time to escape from castes and feudal system, from a sort of conservatism and from a big and entrenched fatalism...
To say it in a nutshell, of course (and I have no time tonight to write more).
But I came back a little... changed. You see many things from a different viewpoint after having lived a bit in India (6 months in 1994). Relativity...
In 1997, I went to Delhi for 2 weeks, to take part in the wedding of a friend of mine (a Franco-Vietnamese, employed at the embassy).

Ah, you worked at the embassy? I ought to go to India myself; I never have.

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Chaudhary Charan Singh

My (sort of) namesake

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Manmohan Singh

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Nehru, of course.

Of course?

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Shastri

Of course, Shastri was the only non-dynast from the Congress who wasn't a tool, and he should've lived longer, but in terms of relative importance, it's no contest.

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Too bad he wasn't actually a survivor.