Prime Minister and Council of Ministers – India

The Indian government on Tuesday ( i.e 27th May 2014) announced its list of cabinet ministers along with their portfolios, a day after Narendra Modi was sworn in as the new prime minister.

Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its allies won a landslide victory in a mammoth general election grabbing 336 of the 543 seats and ending the Congress-led government’s decade-long rule.

Besides Modi, 45 other members were inducted into the new council of ministers, a third smaller than the previous government. Modi himself would look after atomic energy, space, personnel and any ministry not allocated to a cabinet colleague.

Modi announced on Sunday that a smaller cabinet was a move to a more centralised system of governing, aimed at breaking bottlenecks widely blamed for dragging down India’s economic growth.

Arun Jaitley, a former commerce and law minister, takes charge of finance, corporate affairs and defence, although he said the defence ministry charge is temporary. Rajnath Singh is India’s new home minister.

 

Prime Minister and Council of Ministers – India

 

S.no	Portfolio	Name
Cabinet Ministers .
1	Prime Minister and also in-charge of the Ministries/Departments not specifically allocated to the charge of any Minister	Narendra Modi
	Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions
	Department of Atomic Energy Department of Space
2	Home Affairs	Rajnath Singh
3	External Affairs, Overseas Indian Affairs	Sushma Swaraj
4	Finance, Corporate Affairs, Defence	Arun Jaitley
5	Urban Development Housing, Urban Poverty Alleviation, Parliamentary Affairs	M Venkaiah Naidu
6	Road Transport, Highways Shipping	Nitin Gadkari
7	Railways	D V Sadananda Gowda
8	Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation	Uma Bharati
9	Minority Affairs	Dr Najma A Heptulla
10	Rural Development, Panchayati Raj, Drinking Water and Sanitation	Gopinath Munde
11	Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution	Ram Vilas Paswan
12	Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises	Kalraj Mishra
13	Women and Child Development	Maneka Gandhi
14	Chemicals and Fertilizers	Ananth Kumar
15	Communications and Information Technology, Law and Justice	Ravi Shankar Prasad
16	Civil Aviation	Ashok Gajapathi Raju Pusapati
17	Heavy Industries and Public Enterprises	Anant Geete
18	Food Processing Industries	Harsimrat Kaur Badal
19	Mines Steel Labour and Employment	Narendra Singh Tomar
20	Tribal Affairs	Jual Oram
21	Agriculture	Radha Mohan Singh
22	Social Justice and Empowerment	Thaawar Chand Gehlot
23	Human Resource Development	Smriti Irani
24	Health and Family Welfare	Dr Harsh Vardhan
Ministers of State with Independent Charge .
1	Development of North Eastern Region, External Affairs, Overseas Indian Affairs	General VK Singh
2	Planning, Statistics and Programme Implementation, Defence	Inderjit Singh Rao
3	Textiles, Parliamentary Affairs, Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation	Santosh Kumar Gangwar
4	Culture and Tourism	Shripad Yesso Naik
5	Petroleum and Natural Gas	Dharmendra Pradhan
6	Skill Development, Entrepreneurship, Youth Affairs and Sports	Sarbananda Sonowal
7	Information and Broadcasting Environment, Forest and Climate Change, Parliamentary Affairs	Prakash Javadekar
8	Power, Coal, New and Renewable Energy	Piyush Goyal
9	Science and Technology Earth Sciences Prime Minister Office Personnel, Public Grievances & Pensions Department of Atomic Energy, Department of Space	Jitendra Singh
10	Commerce and Industry, Finance Corporate Affairs	Nirmala Sitharaman
. Ministers of State .
1	Civil Aviation	GM Siddeshwara
2	Railways	Manoj Sinha
3	Chemicals and Fertilizers	Nihalchand
4	Rural Development Panchayati Raj Drinking Water and Sanitation	Upendra Kushwaha
5	Heavy Industries and Public Enterprises	Radhakrishnan P
6	Home Affairs	Kiren Rijiju
7	Road Transport and Highways Shipping	Krishan Pal
8	Agriculture, Food Processing Industries	Dr Sanjeev Kumar Balyan
9	Tribal Affairs	Mansukhbhai Dhanjibhai Vasava
10	Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution	Raosaheb Dadarao Danve
11	Mines, Steel, Labour and Employment	Vishnu Deo Sai
12	Social Justice and Empowerment	Sudarshan Bhagat

 

 

Note: Incorporates changes in the Council of Ministers as on 27.05.2014.

 

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PV Narasimha Rao – Father of Indian Economic Reforms

PV Narasimha Rao

One more legendary Prime Minister of India  Mr PV Narasimha Rao, an (un)forgotten Hero, the TRUE and ACTUAL initiator of Economic Reforms in India.  The common in Mr Vajpayee and Rao is, that they both are simple, humble, noble and down to earth persons. Did not accumulated any money using their official positions. One more interesting similarity between them is, Mr Vajpayee is poet and Mr Rao is a linguist.

Pamulaparti Venkata “Narasimha Rao” (28 June 1921 – 23 December 2004) was an Indian lawyer, politician, and activist who served as the ninthPrime Minister of India (1991–1996).

*** Mr PV Narasimha Rao led an important administration, overseeing a major economic transformation and several home incidents affecting national security of India.  Rao who held the Industries portfolio was personally responsible for the dismantling of the Licence Raj as this came under the purview of the Industries Ministry. He is often referred to as the “Father of Indian Economic Reforms”.

Rao accelerated the dismantling of the license raj, reversing the socialist policies under the government of Rajiv Gandhi. He employed Dr. Manmohan Singh as hisFinance Minister to embark on historic economic transition.

With Rao’s mandate, Dr. Manmohan Singh launched India’s globalization angle of the reforms that implemented the IMF policies to rescue the almost bankrupt nation from economic collapse. Rao was also referred to as Chanakyafor his ability to steer tough economic and political legislation through the parliament at a time when he headed a minority government.

Economic Reforms

Rao’s major achievement is generally considered to be the liberalization of the Indian economy. The reforms were adopted to avert impending international default in 1991.  The reforms progressed furthest in the areas of opening up to foreign investment, reforming capital markets,deregulating domestic business, and reforming the trade regime. Rao’s government’s goals were reducing the fiscal deficit, Privatization of the public sector, and increasing investment in infrastructure. Trade reforms and changes in the regulation of foreign direct investment were introduced to open India to foreign trade while stabilizing external loans. Rao chose Manmohan Singh for the job of Finace Minister, who is  an acclaimed economist, played a central role in implementing these reforms.

Major reforms in India’s capital markets led to an influx of foreign portfolio investment. The major economic policies adopted by Rao include:

• Abolishing in 1992 the Controller of Capital Issues which decided the prices and number of shares that firms could issue.
  

• Introducing the SEBI Act of 1992 and the Security Laws (Amendment) which gave SEBI the legal authority to register and regulate all security market intermediaries.
  

• Opening up in 1992 of India’s equity markets to investment by foreign institutional investors and permitting Indian firms to raise capital on international markets by issuing Global Depository Receipts (GDRs).
  

• Starting in 1994 of the National Stock Exchange as a computer-based trading system which served as an instrument to leverage reforms of India’s other stock exchanges. The NSE emerged as India’s largest exchange by 1996.
  

• Reducing tariffs from an average of 85 percent to 25 percent, and rolling back quantitative controls. (The rupee was made convertible on trade account.)
  

• Encouraging foreign direct investment by increasing the maximum limit on share of foreign capital in joint ventures from 40 to 51% with 100% foreign equity permitted in priority sectors.
  

• Streamlining procedures for FDI approvals, and in at least 35 industries, automatically approving projects within the limits for foreign participation.
  

The impact of these reforms may be gauged from the fact that total foreign investment (including foreign direct investment, portfolio investment, and investment raised on international capital markets) in India grew from a minuscule US $132 million in 1991–92 to $5.3 billion in 1995–96.  Rao began industrial policy reforms with the manufacturing sector. He slashed industriallicensing, leaving only 18 industries subject to licensing. Industrial regulation was rationalized.***

Personal Details:

Narasimha Rao was popularly known as PV.

P.V. Narasimha Rao had “humble social origins”. He was born in 28 June 1921 at Laknepally village -Near Narsampet in Warangal District to a Niyogi Telugu Brahmin family. At the age of 3 years he was adopted and brought up to Vangara village in the present-day Karimnagar district ofAndhra Pradesh. His father P. Ranga Rao and mother Rukminiamma hailed from agrarian families.

He studied Bachelor’s in the Arts college at the Osmania University and later on went to Fergusson College now under University of Pune where he completed a Master’s degree in law.  His mother tongue was Telugu and had an excellent command of Marathi. In addition to eight Indian languages (Telugu, Hindi, Urdu, Oriya, Marathi, Bengali, Gujarati, Tamil), he spoke English, French, Arabic, Spanish, German, Greek, Latin and Persian.

(courtesy : Wikipedia)