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Influential speeches
At their best, speeches highlight the concerns of the times and inspire a nation to great acts. From Surendranath Banerjea’s 1878 speech addressing the issue of Indian unity to . Jinnah’s address in 1940 calling for the creation of Pakistan, from Homi Bhabha’s espousal of the peaceful uses of nuclear energy in the 1960s to Rajiv Gandhi’s address on disarmament in 1988, from Gopal Krishna Gokhale’s first budget speech in the imperial legislative council in 1902 to Manmohan Singh’s equally epoch-making one in 1992, great speeches have shaped the development of India. The book brings together over 150 of the most important speeches in our history.
The Penguin Book of Modern Indian Speeches: 1877 to the present Edited by Rakesh Batabyal Penguin Books India Price: Rs. 595.00
Changing fortunes
The Chandra Shekhar government had fallen. Fresh elections had been called. Yashwant Sinha, finance minister in the caretaker government, was in Patna, contesting for the Lok Sabha against tough opposition, when a senior officer from the finance ministry brought an urgent file for his signature: India needed to mortgage gold to obtain a loan from the Bank of England to tide over a payments crisis — there were just enough foreign exchange reserves to pay for two weeks’ imports. The crisis devolved on Sinha to take this drastic step. If he ever got the opportunity, he promised himself, he would make sure that India never had to face such a crisis again.
The opportunity came in 1998, when Sinha was appointed finance minister in the NDA government and was faced with yet another crisis: the nuclear tests in May that year resulted in sanctions. The finance minister’s decision to issue the Resurgent India Bonds helped tide over it, raising 4.25 billion in two weeks from NRIs, and India hasn’t looked back since. In Confessions of a Swadeshi Reformer he gives us the inside story of how the framework for the growth that has t
aken place subsequently was laid in that time.
Confessions of a Swadeshi Reformer: My Years as Finance Minister By Yashwant Sinha Penguin Books India Price: Rs 450.00
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