Rajiv became the fifth Prime Minister of India in 1984 after the murder of his mother India Gandhi. He had no political experience, he was an airline pilot when he had been inducted by the party as a dynastic succession. It was a generational change in many ways. He was in his forties and grew up in independent India.
India has had 15 prime minsters since independence. 6 have served a full term or more. I wanted to reflect and assess their performance, especially with respect to their impact on the economy.
Unless I am missing somebody, here the fifteen:
Jawaharlal Nehru, Guljarilal Nanda, Lal Bahadur Shastri, Indira Gandhi, Morarjee Desai, Charan Singh, Rajeev Gandhi, VP Singh, Chandra Sekhar, Narasimhan Rao, Deve Gowda, IP Gujral, Atal Bihar Vajpayee, Manmohan Singh and Narendra Modi.
Jawahar Lal Nehru was the first prime minister of Independent India. He served from August 1947 till his death in May of 1964. He was Mahatma Gandhi’s chosen favorite. He spoke for all Indians when he gave his “Tryst with Destiny speech” on the eve of the independence: