Former Prime Ministers PV Narasimha Rao and Chaudhary Charan Singh along with MS Swaminathan, will be awarded with the Bharat Ratna, India’s highest civilian award. The decision was announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday.
There are five recipients of Bharat Ratna this year (which is the highest so far), namely PV Narasimha Rao (father of Indian economic reforms), Chaudhari Charan Singh (champion of Indian peasants), Karpoori Thakur (a Mandal icon), MS Swaminathan (father of the Green Revolution), and Lal Krishna Advani (architect of the BJP and icon of Kamandal politics).
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What is Bharat Ratna?
It is the highest civilian award in India. It is conferred to an individual for his or her exceptional work or performance of the highest order without any distinction of race, gender, or position. The award was originally limited to achievements in the eight fields of literature, public services, and science, but in 2011, the Government of India expanded the criteria to include ‘any field of human endeavor’. The Prime Minister of India makes a recommendation to the president for the Bharat Ratna award. The former governor-general of the Union of India, C. Rajagopalachari, the former President of the Republic of India, Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, and the famous physicist CV Raman were the first recipients of Bharat Ratna.
Legacy of PV Narasimha Rao
Pamulaparthi Venkata Narasimha Rao, popularly known as PV Narasimha Rao, was the former Prime Minister of India from 1991 to 1996. He was the first Prime Minister from South India (united Andhra Pradesh). In the words of former prime minister Dr. Manmohan Singh, PV Narasimha Rao is the true father of economic reform. When he took over as the prime minister of India in 1991, the country was crippled with severe economic problems. He appointed Dr. Manmohan Singh as a finance minister and gave him a charge to reform the economy.
In people’s memory, Rao is a market icon who liberalized and saved the economy. He is also known as the father of the Indian Nuclear Programme, in 1996. Vajpayee admitted that Rao is the true father of the Indian nuclear program because, during his tenure, only nuclear weapons were prepared, but due to the election of 1996, he couldn’t conduct a nuclear test. apart from this the disputed structure of the Babri Masjid was demolished during his tenure. also he was the first Non-Gandhi Prime Minister to complete a full five-year tenure.
The Legacy of Chaudhary Charan Singh
Chaudhary Charan Singh was a towering farmer leader from the Jat community who served as the fifth Prime Minister of India. He was a freedom fighter and a follower of Mahatma Gandhi. He was seen as someone who opposed Jawaharlal Nehru when he was Invincible; he opposed his Soviet style of economic reforms and advocated for peasant proprietorship. He was known as the chief architect of land reforms in Uttar Pradesh. He remained a congressman for most of his life, but in 1980 he formed his party, Lok Dal. Today, it is known as the Rashtriya Lok Dal, which influences western Uttar Pradesh.
The Legacy of MS Swaminathan
Mankombu Sambasivan Swaminathan was an Indian agronomist, agriculture scientist, administrator, and humanitarian. He is known as the father of the Indian Green Revolution. He was born in Madras, Presidency of British India, on August 7, 1925. He started his higher education in zoology, but after witnessing the impacts of the Bengal famine of 1943 during World War II and the shortage of food grains, he decided to devote his life to ensuring India achieves self-sufficiency in food.
In 1954, Swaminathan joined an Indian agriculture research institution as an assistant cytogeneticist. Swaminathan, along with Nobel Prize-winning American agronomist Norman Borlaug, toured India and developed new high-yield variety seeds, which has brought green revolution in India.
In 1972, he was appointed as the Director General of the Indian Council of Agriculture Research and a secretary to the Government of India. In 1982, he was made the first director general of the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines. also awarded the first World Food Prize. Swaminathan played an important role in the United Nations Millennium Project on Hunger from 2000 to 2005. He died at home in Chennai on September 28, 2023, at the age of 98.
