Rajiv Gandhi

Rajiv Gandhi Biography

Rajiv Gandhi was born on 20^th August 1944 at Mumbai.  He was the seventh Prime Minister of India. He was a famous political leader and a professional pilot.  He was born in India’s great political family. Jawaharlal Nehru was his grandfather who was an Indian independence leader and the first Prime Minister of India after independence. His mother was Indira Priyadarshini and his father was Feroze Gandhi. Sanjay Gandhi was his brother.

He studied at Elite Doon School, Dehradun. Later he went to London to complete his A-Level Studies. In 1962, he joined at Trinity College, Cambridge in Britain to study engineering.  There he met an Italian student Sonia Mainao. They fell in love with each other and they got married in 1969. He has one son named Rahul and one daughter named Priyanka.

He became a professional pilot of Indian Airlines. His younger brother Sanjay Gandhi joined politics to assist his mother Indira Gandhi. After the death of Sanjay Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi entered politics. He won in his first Lok Sabha election in 1981. Then he became the General Secretary of the Indian National Congress. In 1984, after the assassination of his mother, he became the Prime Minister of India.

As a Prime Minister, he struggled to eliminate the corrupt and criminal faces within the Congress Party. He made many reforms in science and technology and started many industries. His government introduced many policies on import quotas, taxes and tariffs on technology based industries like computers, defense, airlines and telecommunications. He also introduced National Policy on Education to expand and improve the higher education programs in India.  In 1986, he founded Jawahar Navodaya System, the Central government based institution to develop the rural areas by providing free residential education from 6^th to 12^th grade. In 1986, he launched new technologies like public call office (PCO) to spread telecommunication in rural areas.

Currency crisis is a one of the major problems faced by his government. The value of Indian Rupees lost 30 percent against US Dollar. Anti Sikh riots, Bofors scandal, Shah Bano case, Allegations of black money are some of the problems faced by him.  In 1987, he sent Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) to Sri Lanka to end the Sri Lankan civil war between the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and Sri Lankan military. This was opposed by LTTE and they asked to withdraw the IPKF. But Rajiv Gandhi refused to withdraw IPKF. At the campaign for elections in Sriperumbudur, Tamilnadu, he was killed on 21^st may, 1991 by a women suicide bomber belonging to LTTE.

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Updated: January 06, 2018