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Madhu Dandavate

Madhu Dandavate (21 January 1924 – 12 November 2005) was an Indian physicist and socialist politician, who served as Minister of Railways in the Morarji Desai ministry, and as Minister of Finance in the V P Singh ministry.

Born in Ahmednagar, Bombay Presidency, Dandavate studied and was employed as a physicist in Bombay, before participating in the Quit India Movement in 1942. After independence, he served as a Member of Parliament from Rajapur in Maharashtra from 1971 to 1991. As an opposition politician, Dandavate was jailed during the Emergency. Serving as Railway Minister from 1977 to 1979, he initiated a number of improvements, most notably providing more comfortable cushioned seats to second-class passengers, a measure that "helped hundreds of millions of people". Later in the late 1980s, he served as Finance Minister.

A prominent socialist politician and opposition leader, Dandavate was respected for his integrity, knowledge, simplicity and pragmatism, with historian Ramachandra Guha placing him among the few ministers who "shall be remembered for having carried out programmes that radically reshaped the lives of their people". Provided by Wikipedia