Suzuki and Singh: Two men who changed the face of India

They had little in common at first sight but both made pivotal decisions guided by a similar philosophy: Think big, act big.

- Ravi Velloor

Perhaps it was in the stars that two men who so changed the face of modern India should have departed the world in the same week.

Mr Osamu Suzuki, the patriarch of the eponymously named Japanese small-car company, was 94 years old when he died of lymphoma on Christmas Day.

Dr Manmohan Singh, the reformist finance minister and, later, "accidental prime minister" of India as his former media adviser called him, died the next day in New Delhi of age-related complications.

He was thought to be 92 - his exact date of birth is a conjecture, although the official birthdate is Sept 26, 1932. Born in a village of an undivided India that is now in Pakistan's Punjab, there was no accurate record-keeping at the time.

Why would Mr Suzuki, a golf-loving technocrat who married into wealth in a society that abhors disorder be linked even remotely to a scholarly economist turned bureaucrat and politician who came to run chaotic India for a full 10 years?

Blame it on a series of untimely and unnatural deaths in the Nehru-Gandhi household.

On June 23, 1980, a Pitts stunt plane went down in central Delhi, killing Sanjay Gandhi, the politically active younger son of then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.

The headstrong Sanjay's dream had been to make a modern automobile in India and he had pursued it vigorously, but with little success.

The Maruti "people's car" he had dreamed of was a flop.

To fulfil her dead son's dream, Mrs Gandhi nationalised Maruti and turned to a technocrat named V. Krishnamurthy who'd performed spectacularly well at two government-linked companies previously.

Scouring the world for technology, Mr Krishnamurthy's team found themselves sitting in front of Mr Suzuki in Tokyo.

SUZUKI'S DREAM