Jairam Ramesh remembers Rajiv Gandhi's role in building ties with US, China

Jairam Ramesh mentioned that 40 years ago, Rajiv Gandhi met President Ronald Reagan in the White House led to the establishment of the R&D centre of Texas Instruments in Bengaluru

New Delhi: Congress leader Jairam Ramesh on Wednesday recalled the contribution of former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi in India's emergence in the software sector and his role in building ties with the US and China.

Paying tributes to Rajiv Gandhi, Congress general secretary, communications, Jairam Ramesh said it was almost exactly 40 years ago that Rajiv Gandhi - whose 81st birth anniversary is today - met President Ronald Reagan in the White House and brought about a transformation in the Indo-US relationship.

"It was this visit that led to the establishment of the R&D centre of Texas Instruments in Bengaluru. This was a critical milestone in the emergence of India's software capabilities globally. GE was to follow three years later. Today India is dotted with what has been renamed Global Capability Centres," he said on X.

"It was also Rajiv Gandhi's truly historic visit to China in December 1988 that completely changed the relationship between the two countries. The path set by him and the Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping was destroyed unilaterally by China in May-June 2020 - for which, disastrously for us, it was given a clean chit on June 19, 2020 by Prime Minister Modi," Ramesh said further.

Rajiv Gandhi served as prime minister from 1984 to 1989.