Within a month of taking charge PV dismantled it in one fell swoop. Indian enterprise, PV believed, would bloom if liberated from the straitjacket of bureaucratic socialism. It is worth noting that he was the only prime minister who had the political courage to confer a business leader with the nation’s highest honour, when he bestowed the Bharat Ratna on J. R. D. Tata. No businessman has since been so honoured.
