Page 165 - Demo

A Tragic Twist of Fate PVG Raju married Madhuri Thakkar in 1963. She was a doctor in Niloufer Hospital when they met in Hyderabad. They later had three children Alak Narayan Gajapathi Raju, Sudani Devi and Monish Gajapathi Raju.In 1964, PVG Raju was the Cabinet Minister for Education in the Government of Andhra Pradesh. At the time, the education portfolio was considered the most important after Finance and because of his interest in the subject (he had committed the bulk of his inheritance to the cause of education), he took his job seriously. The education sector at the time was expanding exponentially, and the direction and intensity of the effort was something he took a great interest in. He had just introduced the budget for education for the year 1964-65 %u2013 a budget that was praised even by the opposition for its thoughtfulness and attention to detail. At the time MC Chagla had become the Union Education Minister after being asked to take up the portfolio by Nehru. The task was enormous %u2013 making plans for widening education throughout the country and standardising it across different levels and various disciplines. The methodology being contemplated was to set up a commission after a process of consultations with state governments about the terms of reference as education is on the concurrent list. The conference of education ministers to be held at Chandigarh in Punjab was on Technical Education and PVG Raju had definite ideas on the subject. As he was to say on a later occasion, %u201cIn India, the founders of the Constitution placed education as a state subject whereby there is total freedom of to develop regional languages and mass education %u2026%u2026%u2026 but then education is also in the 151