The Right to Information Act, 2005, brought about enormous transparency in the process of decision making. With information available to citizens, government could be held accountable, making transparency a policy prescription. The Right to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009, allowed 25% of children belonging to the poor and marginalised communities to be admitted to private schools where their education was subsidised from Class I to Class VIII. These changes in many senses recognised that unless people at the bottom of the pyramid have opportunities, India will continue to be an iniquitous society.‘His tenure to be etched in history in golden letters’Constitutional reforms allowing reservations in promotion posts and educational institutions for the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes and the backward communities were reforms that catered to the needs of the less privileged. The constitutional amendments in 1995 and then in 2000 allowed for reservation of SCs and STs in promotional posts and reservations in filling backlog vacancies, respectively. Having come from a humble background, uprooted during Partition and starting his career as a teacher, he understood the concerns of the common man, concerns central to his policy prescriptions either during his tenure as a bureaucrat or when he was PM.On the economic front, through his policies as Finance Minister during Narasimha Rao’s regime, he opened up several sectors. He got rid of the license raj, reduced tariffs and import restrictions, encouraged foreign direct investment in most sectors and signaled an opportunity for the private sector to enter markets thus far reserved for the public sector. The technology revolution that we are seeing today in the IT and the telecommunications sector was signally responsible for the growth rates which were achieved during UPA I and II.
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