Ex-PM Lal Bahadur Shastri’s Widow Repaying PNB’s ₹5000 Loan Is The Integrity We Lack Today

The Indian economy has been caught up in a whirlwind since as long as we can remember. Be it Vijay Mallya’s million dollar scam, Lalu Prasad Yadav’s fodder scam and now, most recently Nirav Modi’s ₹11,000 crore PNB scam, we’re not new to being betrayed by our own.

It makes us wonder what kind of society we’re living in and what kind of men are we raising. Because things were not always like this.

A TOI report shared an anecdote from history, of the integrity that our forefathers showcased and preached. Lal Bahadur Shastri, the then PM of India, had taken a ₹5000 loan from Punjab National Bank in 1964 to buy a Fiat.

It was in 1964 when the Shastri family found out that the Fiat cost about ₹12,000. They had only ₹7000, so they applied for a loan in PNB which was sanctioned the same day.

It was a cream coloured Fiat with the registration number DLE 6, which is still at the exhibit at Lal Bahadur Shastri Memorial. His son recalled that even when PM Manmohan Singh visited the museum, he wanted to get a picture with the vintage car.

PM Shastri had gone to Tashkent in 1966 to sign the declaration that ended the 1965 war between India and Pakistan that he died suddenly.

In case of his sad and untimely demise, the loan was paid off by his widow, Lalita, with the pension she received.

His son Anil said,

“The loan remained unpaid. It was repaid by my mother (Lalita) from the pension she received after my father’s death.”

Despite the circumstances, the family did not deter from their responsibility to repay the bank’s loan. That is the kind of integrity men and their families had.

Whether Nirav Modi gets his well-deserved punishment or not, the honest tax-payer of this country suffers irrespective of that.