It is not clear why Arun Jaitley decided to deliver this year's Sardar Patel memorial lecture but he is the first I & B minister to do so. Since 1955 when it was instituted in memory of Sardar Vallabh Bhai Patel, India's first minister of information and broadcasting, it has been delivered by historians, scientists, retired administrators and diplomats, politicians, anthropologists and others. Former I & B minister Vasant Sathe also delivered it, but a decade after he had ceased to be in the cabinet.