Atal Bihari Vajpayee - The Socio-Economic Reformer

Former Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who passed away at the age of 93 on August 16, 2018, was the forerunner for several socio-economic reforms undertaken by his successors. He continued to liberalise the economy and presented a fresh image of India to the world.

- Tushar K Mahanti

Like many popular politicians, Vajpayee gave people wide-ranging reasons to admire, but one that has left an enduring impact on the country is most probably his economic policies.

Policies that helped expand highways, cut mobile tariffs, lowered interest rates and privatised PSUs would stand out. The Vajpayee government liberalised the economy further, and gave a new direction to infrastructure. His government is known to have taken road and infrastructure projects to the next level in the country through the Golden Quadrilateral and the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana, something the country was in desperate need to fulfill the reform agenda. Under the Golden Quadrilateral project the four major metro cities, Chennai, Kolkata, Delhi and Mumbai were connected through a network of highways. The Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana laid down a network of roads for the unconnected villages across India.

His desire to reduce government role in running businesses and industry was reflected in the formation of a separate disinvestment ministry. The most important disinvesments were Bharat Aluminium Company (BALCO) and Hindustan Zinc, Indian Petrochemicals Corporation Limited and VSNL.