What is Indira Gandhi’s legacy?
It is former prime minister Indira Gandhi’s 25th death anniversary on October 31.
What was her legacy?
She was associated with events like the Emergency, which briefly made Gerald Ford head of the largest democracy in the world, and decades of militancy in Punjab.
Her policy of nationalising banks was mentioned as a reason why the Indian banking sector weathered the global financial crisis.
She also won a famous military victory in the 1971 war with Pakistan and ordered the Pokhran I nuclear tests three years later.
Going by columns and television discussions around her anniversary, it is safe to say it was contentious.
Over her career and beyond she was compared to a dumb doll, the goddess ‘Durga’, a lioness and Napolean.
Indira Gandhi was well judged in her living years and one can say got all fitting replies to her actions, in her lifetime. P Shivshankar her lawyer told Outlook that Indira had no knowledge of Constitution. To summarize, Indira furthered creation of democratic dictatorship, first kicked off by her father Nehru. Indira never trusted anyone but her family only and so made Sanjay Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi heroes without any deed during her lifetime. The leadership offered by her only alienated people with faith native to this nation APART which was for he first time during entire history of our nation from start to end. To summarize, her leadership plunged India into depths of darkness. For example, her green revolution theory, an extremely weak and baseless theory, so praised by Congressis is now turning to be a bane of farmers as the soil loses fertility and organic farming takes roots which anyways had roots in India from start.