Indira's vision faces challenges today: Scholar

Former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi had set India on the path to economic reforms which would increase its capacity to be independent and sovereign while being just to the poor and the disadvantaged, but her vision faces a serious challenge today, historian Aditya Mukherjee claimed today.
Addressing a seminar on 'Indira Gandhi: shaping the Indian economy' as part of her centenary celebrations, he rejected suggestions that Nehru-Indira years were a "wasted opportunity".
He said if post 1991 strategy was adopted in 1950s, "India would surely have headed towards becoming a banana republic."
Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi and senior party leaders P Chidambaram, A K Antony and Anand Sharma were present on the occasion.

"Indira Gandhi Gandhi set India on the path to economic reforms, which would increase India's capacity to be independent and sovereign while being just to the poor and disadvantaged. We may remind ourselves that it is this legacy which needs to be taken forward as many elements of Indira Gandhi's vision face a serious challenge today," the professor of contemporary history at the JNU said.
Speaking on the occasion, senior journalist Prem Shankar Jha reminded that save the tiger, mid-day meal scheme and restrictions on having high rise building along coastlines were actually her concepts.
Dinesh Singh, former vice chancellor of the Delhi University said Indira never interfered with the functioning of institutions and she in face preserved institutions.