Word: rajiv
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Rajiv's goal was to give his country reform, modernization, deregulation -- all catchwords underpinning his frequently quoted aim of "bringing India into the 21st century." But he failed to do so in his first stab at leadership, and whether he could have done so during a second time around had remained open to question. "Computerji," as he became known, long ago found that he and his privileged circle of technology lovers were not equal to the task of budging old-line party pros and the bureaucracy-infested Industrial Raj. As columnist Sunanda Datta-Ray remarked in the Statesman of Calcutta...
...family that the deaths of both mother and son may have originated in policies of their own devising. Indira had covertly helped promote the rise of Sikh extremism in Punjab in an effort to thwart a more moderate rival party in the troubled northwestern state. In his turn, Rajiv had gone along for a while with arming the Tamil Tigers and furnishing them with sanctuary and training camps in southern India. But he had abandoned that effort by mid-1987, and the image that survives him is mostly favorable...
...Rajiv's greatest liability -- the fact that he was not by nature a politician -- was also his virtue. "Those who talked to Rajiv Gandhi noted the absence of humbug that is so typical of our political leaders," wrote Datta-Ray. Yet many thoughtful Indians and foreign leaders are not at all ready to write off the world's largest democracy. "Indian democracy has weathered such blows before and can do so again," said a senior British diplomat. Economist John Kenneth Galbraith, U.S. ambassador to New Delhi during the Kennedy Administration, called the system "imperfect but secure." Said Galbraith: "The idea...
...wonder Congress elders turned immediately to Sonia Gandhi, 44, as party leader. But Sonia is a widow with no desire for power. She never wanted her husband Rajiv to enter politics, much less succeed his mother. It was Sonia who cradled Indira's head as she lay dying from assassins' bullets, and friends note that after the shooting in 1984, she became obsessed with the safety of her husband and children. Behind the dark glasses she wore during public appearances, her eyes constantly searched crowds for a possible assassin. Says a friend: "What she was most afraid...
Sonia's aloofness has helped make her a formidable and somewhat unfathomable figure. She assiduously tended Rajiv's constituency in Amethi, Uttar Pradesh state, but apparently disliked politics. Though a naturalized Indian citizen ! since 1983, she is Italian by birth, and almost certainly would have faced strong opposition on that ground alone...