He built India's most famous highway project, started privatisation to cut government's role in running businesses and made big-ticket overseas acquisitions to secure energy supplies - former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee was truly a bellwether policy reformer of modern India.

Regarded by some as the father of second generation economic reforms, Vajpayee, who died today at the age of 93 years, was decisive and pursued his reforms agenda with vigour without getting ruffled by criticism. Modelled loosely around the National Highway System of the US, he in 2001 launched the Golden Quadrilateral and the North-South & East-West Corridor projects to build 4/6 lane highways between four top metropolitan cities of Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata as well as from Srinagar to Kanyakumari and Porbandar to Silchar. His idea was simple - construct arterial roads that could spur development just like what was witnessed in the US.