Prime minister of India in the context of "Science and technology in India"

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⭐ Core Definition: Prime minister of India

The prime minister of India (ISO: Bhārat kē Pradhānamantrī) is the head of government of the Republic of India. Executive authority is vested in the prime minister and his chosen Council of Ministers, despite the president of India being the nominal head of the executive. The prime minister has to be a member of one of the houses of bicameral Parliament of India, alongside heading the respective house. The prime minister and the cabinet are at all times responsible to the Lok Sabha.

The sitting prime minister ranks third in the Order of Precedence of India and is appointed by the president of India; however, the prime minister has to enjoy the confidence of the majority of Lok Sabha members, who are directly elected every five years, lest the prime minister shall resign. The prime minister can be a member of the Lok Sabha or the Rajya Sabha, the upper house of the parliament. The prime minister controls the selection and dismissal of members of the Union Council of Ministers and allocation of posts to members within the government.

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👉 Prime minister of India in the context of Science and technology in India

After independence, Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister of India, initiated reforms to promote higher education and science and technology in India. The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT)—conceived by a 22-member committee of scholars and entrepreneurs in order to promote technical education—was inaugurated on 18 August 1951 at Kharagpur in West Bengal by the minister of education Maulana Abul Kalam Azad. More IITs were soon opened in Bombay, Madras, Kanpur and Delhi as well in the late 1950s and early 1960s along with the Regional Engineering Colleges (RECs) (now National Institutes of Technology (NIT). Beginning in the 1960s, close ties with the Soviet Union enabled ISRO to rapidly develop the Indian space program and advance nuclear power in India even after the first nuclear test explosion by India on 18 May 1974 at Pokhran.

India accounts for about 10% of all expenditure on research and development in Asia and the number of scientific publications grew by 45% over the five years to 2007. However, according to former Indian science and technology minister Kapil Sibal, India is lagging in science and technology compared to developed countries. India has only 140 researchers per 1,000,000 population, compared to 4,651 in the United States. India invested US$3.7 billion in science and technology in 2002–2003. For comparison, China invested about four times more than India, while the United States invested approximately 75 times more than India on science and technology. Research and development spending grew to US$17.2 Billion in 2020–2021.

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Prime minister of India in the context of Parliament of India

28°37′2″N 77°12′29″E / 28.61722°N 77.20806°E / 28.61722; 77.20806The Parliament of India (ISO: Bhāratīya Saṁsada) is the supreme legislative body of the Government of the Republic of India. It is a bicameral legislature composed of the Rajya Sabha (Council of States) and the Lok Sabha (House of the People). The President of the Republic of India, in their role as head of the legislature, has full powers to summon and prorogue either house of Parliament or to dissolve the Lok Sabha, but they can exercise these powers only upon the advice of the Prime Minister of the Republic of India and the Union Council of Ministers.

Those elected or nominated (by the president) to either house of the Parliament are referred to as members of Parliament (MPs). The members of parliament in the Lok Sabha are directly elected by the voting of Indian citizens in single-member districts and the members of parliament in the Rajya Sabha are elected by the members of all state legislative assemblies by proportional representation. The Parliament has a sanctioned strength of 543 in the Lok Sabha and 245 in the Rajya Sabha including 12 nominees from the expertise of different fields of literature, art, science, and social service. The Parliament meets at Sansad Bhavan in New Delhi. The Parliament of India represents the largest democratic electorate in the world (the second being the European Parliament), with an electorate of 968 million eligible voters in 2024. On 28 May 2023, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, unveiled and inaugurated the New Parliament Building (Sansad Bhavan), located adjacent to the previous one.

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Prime minister of India in the context of Manmohan Singh

Manmohan Singh (26 September 1932 – 26 December 2024) was an Indian economist and statesman who served as the prime minister of India from 2004 to 2014. He was the fourth longest-serving prime minister after Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi, and Narendra Modi. A member of the Indian National Congress, Singh was the first and remains the only Sikh prime minister of India. He was also the first prime minister since Nehru to be re-appointed after completing a full five-year term.

Born in Gah in what is today Pakistan, Singh's family migrated to India during its partition in 1947. After obtaining his doctorate in economics from the University of Oxford, Singh worked for the United Nations during 1966–1969. He subsequently began his bureaucratic career when Lalit Narayan Mishra hired him as an advisor in the Ministry of Commerce and Industry. During the 1970s and 1980s, Singh held several key posts in the Government of India, such as Chief Economic Advisor (1972–1976), governor of the Reserve Bank (1982–1985) and head of the Planning Commission (1985–1987). In 1991, under prime minister, P. V. Narasimha Rao, Singh was appointed as finance minister. Over the next few years, despite strong opposition, he carried out several structural reforms that liberalised India's economy. It enhanced Singh's reputation globally as a leading reform-minded economist. Subsequently, Singh was leader of the opposition in the Rajya Sabha (the upper house of the Parliament of India) during the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government of 1998–2004.

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Prime minister of India in the context of Narsimha Rao

Pamulaparthi Venkata Narasimha Rao (28 June 1921 – 23 December 2004) was an Indian independence activist, lawyer, and statesman from the Indian National Congress who served as the prime minister of India from 1991 to 1996. He was the first person from South India and the second person from a non-Hindi speaking background to be prime minister. He is known for his role in initiating India's economic liberalisation following an economic crisis in 1991, a process that has been sustained and expanded by every successive prime minister of the country.

Prior to his premiership, he served as the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh, and later also held high-order portfolios of the union government, such as Defence, Home Affairs and External Affairs. In 1991 Indian general election, the Indian National Congress led by him, won 244 seats, and thereafter, he, along with external support from other parties, formed a minority government with him being the prime minister.As prime minister, Rao adopted to avert the impending 1991 economic crisis, the reforms progressed furthest in the areas of opening up to foreign investment, reforming capital markets, deregulating domestic business, and reforming the trade regime. Trade reforms and changes in the regulation of foreign direct investment were introduced to open India to foreign trade while stabilising external loans.

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Prime minister of India in the context of Atal Bihari Vajpayee

Atal Bihari Vajpayee (25 December 1924 – 16 August 2018) was an Indian poet, writer and statesman who served as the prime minister of India, first for a term of 13 days in 1996, then for a period of 13 months from 1998 to 1999, followed by a full term from 1999 to 2004. He was the first non-Congress prime minister to serve a full term in the office. Vajpayee was one of the co-founders and a senior leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). He was a volunteer and full-time functionary (pracharak) of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a right-wing Hindutva paramilitary volunteer organisation. He was also a Hindi poet and a writer.The Sangh's emphasis on self-cultivation and disciplined nation-building left a lasting mark on Vajpayee's early worldview. Scholars have observed that Vajpayee combined cultural nationalism with political moderation, shaping a distinctive strand of post-Independence Indian conservatism rooted in civilisational identity. His speeches and poetry are noted for blending political pragmatism with themes drawn from India's cultural and philosophical traditions.

Vajpayee represented a current in Hindu nationalism that sought to harmonise cultural identity with democratic pluralism.

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Prime minister of India in the context of Nehru-Gandhi family

The Nehru–Gandhi family is an Indian political family that has occupied a prominent place in the politics of India. The involvement of the family has traditionally revolved around the Indian National Congress, as various members have traditionally led the party. Three members of the family—Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi—have served as the prime minister of India, while several others have been members of parliament (MP).

The Guardian wrote in 2007, "The Gandhi brand has no peer in the world—a member of the family has been in charge of India for 40 of the 60 years since independence. The allure of India's first family blends the right to rule of British monarchy with the tragic glamour of America's Kennedy clan."

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Prime minister of India in the context of Indirasagar Dam

The Indira Sagar Dam is the largest dam in India, in terms of volume of water stored in the reservoir. It is located on the Narmada River at the town of Narmada Nagar, Punasa in the Khandwa district of Madhya Pradesh in India. The foundation stone of the project was laid by the prime minister of India Indira Gandhi on 23 October 1984. The construction of the main dam started in 1992. The downstream projects of ISP are Omkareshwar, Maheshwar, and Sardar Sarovar Project. To build it, a town of 22,000 people and 100 villages were displaced.

The Project involved construction of a 92 m high and 653 m long concrete gravity dam. It provides irrigation to 1,230 square kilometres of land with annual production of 2.7 billion units in the districts of Khandwa and Khargone in Madhya Pradesh, and power generation of 1,000 MW (8x125 MW) installed capacity. In terms of storage of water, it is the largest reservoir in India, with capacity of 12.22 billion cu m or 12.2 km, followed by Rihand Dam, Uttar Pradesh then Nagarjuna Sagar between Telangana and Andhra Pradesh. The dam was built as a joint venture between Madhya Pradesh irrigation and National Hydroelectric Power Corporation. It was commissioned in May 2005.

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Prime minister of India in the context of Chief minister of Gujarat

The chief minister of Gujarat is the chief executive of the government of the Indian state of Gujarat. The governor appoints the chief minister, whose council of ministers are collectively responsible to the assembly. The chief minister's term is for five years and is subject to no term limits, given that he has the confidence of the assembly.Chief Minister also serves as Leader of the House in the Legislative Assembly.

The state of Gujarat was created on 1 May 1960, composed of the Gujarati-speaking districts of Bombay State following the Mahagujarat Movement. Jivraj Narayan Mehta of the INC was the inaugural chief minister. Narendra Modi of the BJP is the longest serving chief minister for twelve and a half years from 2001 to 2014. He resigned in 2014 to become the 14th prime minister of India. He was succeeded by Anandiben Patel who became the state's first woman chief minister. The current chief minister is Bhupendrabhai Patel of the BJP. He was elected for the post following the resignation of then incumbent Vijay Rupani, who was in office since 7 August 2016.

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Prime minister of India in the context of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh

The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS, lit.'National Volunteer Union' or 'National Volunteer Corps') is an Indian right-wing Hindutva volunteer paramilitary organisation. It is the progenitor and leader of a large body of Hindutva organisations called the Sangh Parivar (Hindi for "Sangh family"), which has developed a presence in all facets of Indian society and includes the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the ruling political party under Narendra Modi, the prime minister of India. Mohan Bhagwat currently serves as the Sarsanghchalak (lit.'Chief') of the RSS, with Dattatreya Hosabale serving as the Sarkaryavah (lit.'General Secretary').

Founded on 27 September 1925, the initial impetus of the organisation was to provide character training and instil "Hindu discipline" in order to unite the Hindu community and establish a Hindu Rashtra (Hindu nation). The organisation aims to spread the ideology of Hindutva to "strengthen" the Hindu community and promotes an ideal of upholding an Indian culture and its "civilisational values". On the other hand, the RSS has been described as being "founded on the premise of Hindu supremacy". The RSS has been accused of an intolerance of minorities, particularly Muslims.

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