'If only JP had accepted Nehru's offer...'

Gopal Krishna Gandhi, former Governor of West Bengal and grandson of Mahatma Gandhi, on Sunday said India would have taken a different course had the late Jaya Prakash Narayan accepted the erstwhile prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s offer to join his Cabinet.

 “Had JP accepted Nehru’s proposal, history would have been different,” said Gandhi, who had served former president R Venkataraman as his private secretary.

It is widely believed that after Sardar Patel’s demise, Nehru had offered Narayan the post of deputy prime minister, which the veteran Socialist politely declined.

Gandhi was speaking at the concluding day of the three-day “Global summit on changing Bihar” in Patna, where he was trying to draw an analogy between the leaders of yesteryear and the present crop of politicians.

The retired bureaucrat-turned-author said in the earlier days, leaders were known for putting country before self and their impeccable integrity.  “Earlier it was take less, give more. Nowadays it’s just the reverse,” he said in an oblique reference to the degeneration among the politicos.

Even renowned journalist and former BBC correspondent Mark Tully took a jibe at the present day leaders and said politicians, of late, have become “jugadu” (manipulator).

“They know how to jugad (manipulate) everything,” said Tully. SEBI chairman U K Sinha, who hails from Bihar’s Gopalganj district, dwelt at length on the need to introduce public private partnership (PPP) mode for accelerating growth.

Earlier, Planning Commission member Abhijit Sen did some plain talking and cautioned the policy makers against trying to do “too much in too many sectors.”