Rajiv Gandhi

Rajiv Gandhi became the Prime Minister of India at the age of 40, after the death of his mother, Mrs. Indira Gandhi. Under his rule, the Congress received its greatest victory in the Lok Sabha elections. He played a major role in the introduction of computers in India. He was the youngest Prime Minister of India. He came from a family that had great political ancestry He was the eldest son of Indira and Feroze Gandhi. His mother Indira Gandhi and grandfather Jawaharlal Nehru were Prime Ministers of India. As, a Prime Minister, he made an important contribution in modernizing the Indian administration.

Rajiv Gandhi was born on August 20, 1944, in Bombay in India's most famous political family. His parents lived separately and Rajiv Gandhi was raised at his grandfather's home where his mother lived. He did his schooling from Doon School and then studied at the University of London and at Trinity College, Cambridge in Britain. At Cambridge, he met and fell in love with an Italian student Sonia Maino whom he married in 1969. On returning to India, Rajiv Gandhi became a commercial airline pilot. His younger brother Sanjay Gandhi entered politics and became a trusted lieutenant of his mother Indira Gandhi.

After Sanjay's death, in a plane crash in 1980, Rajiv Gandhi unwillingly entered politics at the instance of his mother. He won his first Lok Sabha election in 1981 from the Amethi constituency. Soon, he became the General Secretary of the Congress Party. After the assassination of Indira Gandhi in October 1984, he became the Prime Minister of India. Rajiv Gandhi was quite popular among the Indian masses.

During his tenure as Prime Minister of India, he brought a certain enthusiasm to the politics, which had always been occupied by older people. Ho improved bilateral relations with the United States and expanded the economic and scientific approach. He increased government support for science and technology-associated industries and reduced import quotas, taxes and tariffs on technology-based industries, especially computers, airlines, defence and telecommunications.

He worked hard towards reducing the official procedure in the governance and freeing administration from bureaucratic tangles. In 1986, Rajiv Gandhi announced a national education policy to modernize and expand higher education programs across India.

While campaigning for elections in Sriperumbudur, Tamil Nadu, he was assassinated on May 21, 1991, by a suicide bomber.