Key Points
ThePastForwards ontheGyanvapimosque, the1987 India-Sri Lanka Accord, the Green Revolution (the recent death of scientist MS Swaminathan has renewed interest in it)are a brief history of our times...
Rama Lakshmi, Opinion & Ground Reports Editor, who oversees the PastForward section, remembersGuptatalkingabout transformative events that were once important and are relevant again be it in politics, national security, or economics.Never before has the past felt so current and live..
Menon does some of the research and is the lead writer for most PastForwards; Laeeq ploughs through archival material, Parliament or Constituent Assembly debates, research papers, and books; Bikhchandani does a bit of everything and spends a lot of time on the phone..
Here are some examples:Russia pushed for adhering to the 1978 protocol, which resulted in India committing to pay 63 per cent of the debt over a 12-year period, with the rest to be paid over 45 years, as noted by historian Jayanta Kumar Ray in his seminal work Indias Foreign Relations, 1947-2007,reads the PastForward that traces the rupee-rouble romance of the 80s...
Between 1969 and 1983, 415 executives and 142 non-executives (including workmen) have been trained in the USSR,wroteauthor and journalist Bernard DMello in a 1988 article for the Economic and Political Weekly,reads thePastForwardthat documents 100 years of India-Russia camaraderie...
