Varahagiri Venkata Giri 
pronunciation (help·info) (10 August 1894 – 24 June 1980), commonly known as V. V. Giri, was the fourth President of India from 24 August 1969 to 24 August 1974.
Giri completed his initial education at the Khallikote College in Berhampur. In 1913 he went to Ireland to study law which he did at University College Dublin and the Honourable Society of King's Inns, Dublin between 1913–1916. Giri was one among the first crop of thirteen Indian students who sat the obligatory year long course at UCD in 1914–15. This was a requirement for being called to the Irish Bar through study at the King's Inns. In total, 50 Indian students studied at UCD between 1914 and 1917.
Upon returning to India in 1916 Giri enrolled at the Madras High Court. He also became a member of the Congress party, attended its Lucknow session and joined the Home Rule Movement of Annie Beasant. Giri abandoned a flourishing legal career in response to Mahatma Gandhi's call for a Non-Cooperation Movement in 1920. In 1922, he was arrested for the first time for demonstrating against the sale of liquor shops.
Giri was closely associated with the labour and trade union movement in India throughout his career. Giri was a founding member of the All India Railwaymen's Federation which was formed in 1923 and served as its General Secretary for over a decade. He was elected President of the All India Trade Union Congress for the first time in 1926. Giri also founded the Bengal Nagpur Railway Association and in 1928 led the workers of the Bengal Nagpur Railway in a non violent strike for the rights of retrenched workers. The strike succeeded in forcing the British Indian government and the management of the railway company to concede the workers' demands and is regarded as a milestone in the labour movement in India. In 1929, the Indian Trade Union Federation (ITUF) was formed by Giri, N. M. Joshi and others with Giri as the President. The split with the AITUC came about over the issue of cooperating with the Royal Commission on Labour. Giri and the ITUF leadership of liberals decided to cooperate with the Commission while the AITUC decided to boycott it. The ITUF merged with the AITUC in 1939 and Giri became President of the AITUC for a second time in 1942.
Giri was the Workers' Delegate of the Indian delegation at the International Labour Conference of the ILO in 1927. At the Second Round Table Conference, Giri was present as a representative of the industrial workers of India. Giri worked towards getting the trade unions to support the freedom movement in India and was twice President of the AITUC which was closely allied with the Indian National Congress.
Giri became a member of the Imperial Legislative Assembly in 1934. He remained its member until 1937 and emerged a spokesman for matters of labour and trade unions in the Assembly.
In the General Elections of 1936, Giri defeated the Raja of Bobbili to become a member of the Madras Legislative Assembly. Between 1937–1939, he was Minister for Labour and Industry in the Congress government headed by C Rajagopalachari. Giri was appointed Governor of the National Planning Committee of the Indian National Congress in 1938. In 1939, the Congress ministries resigned in protest against the British decision to make India a party in the Second World War. Having returned to the labour movement, Giri was arrested and spent 15 months in prison till March 1941.
Following the launch of the Quit India Movement, Giri was imprisoned again by the colonial government in 1942. He remained in prison when the AITUC met in Nagpur in 1943 where he was the President elect. Giri served his sentence in the Vellore and Amaravathi prisons. Giri remained in prison for three years, his longest sentence, until his release in 1945.
In the General Elections of 1946, Giri was reelected to the Madras Legislative Assembly and became a minister again in charge of the labour portfolio under T. Prakasam.
From 1947 to 1951, Giri served as India's first High Commissioner to Ceylon. In the General Elections of 1951, he was elected to the 1st Lok Sabha from Pathapatnam Lok Sabha Constituency in the Madras State.
On being elected to Parliament, Giri was appointed Minister of Labour in 1952. His policy initiatives as minister gave rise to the Giri Approach in industrial dispute resolution. The Giri approach emphasizes negotiations between the management and workers as the means for resolving industrial disputes. It holds that the failure of such negotiations should lead not to compulsory adjudication but to further negotiations through conciliation officers. However, differences with the government over patronage to trade unions, trade union and government opposition to the Giri Approach and the government's decision to reduce the wages of bank employees led him to resign from government in August 1954.
Between 1957–1967, Giri served as governor of Uttar Pradesh (1957–1960), Kerala (1960–1965) and Karnataka (1965–1967).
Giri was sworn in as the second Governor of Kerala on 1 July 1960. As Governor, Giri's active voicing of Kerala's fiscal needs with the Planning Commission led to the state being allocated significantly more funds in the Third Five Year Plan. When defections from the ruling Congress Party reduced the government to a minority, Giri recommended the imposition of President's Rule in Kerala after determining that an alternative government could not be formed. A hung assembly resulted from the elections to the Kerala Legislative Assembly in 1965. Since no party had a majority and no alliances commanding a majority could be formed, Giri again recommended the dissolution of the assembly and the imposition of President's Rule in the state.
Giri was elected the third Vice President of India on 13 May 1967, a post he held for nearly two years till 3 May 1969. Giri was the first Vice President to not complete his full term in office on account of being elevated to the office of the President and was the third Vice President to be elected to the Presidency.
As President, Giri unquestioningly accepted Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's decision to sack the Charan Singh ministry in Uttar Pradesh and advised her to go in for early elections in 1971. The ordinance abolishing privy purses and privileges of the erstwhile rulers of India's princely states was promulgated by Giri after the government's original amendment was defeated in the Rajya Sabha. His advice to Prime Minister Gandhi against the appointement of A.N. Ray as the Chief Justice of India superseding three judges senior to him was ignored by her as was his warning that a crackdown on striking railwaymen would only exacerbate the situation. As President, Giri made 14 state visits to 22 countries in South and South East Asia, Europe and Africa.
A commemorative postage stamp on V.V Giri was released by the Indian Posts and Telegraphs Department in 1974. The National Labour Institute was renamed in honour of V.V Giri in 1995. Giri's hometown of Berhampur has a major road, a secondary training school and a market that are named after him.
Giri was honoured with India's highest civilian award, the Bharat Ratna, in 1975 for his contributions in the area of public affairs. As President, Giri had suo motu conferred the Bharat Ratna on Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1972. Giri was in turn conferred the Bharat Ratna in 1975 on the recommendation of Prime Minister Gandhi, in an act seen as a quid pro quo measure. Giri was the fourth of five of Presidents of India to have been conferred the Bharat Ratna.
Giri authored Industrial Relations and Labour Problems in Indian Industry, two popular books on issues of labour in India. His memoirs, published in 1976, are titled My Life and Times.
Giri died of a heart attack in Madras on 24 June 1980. He was given a state funeral the next day and a week-long mourning period was declared by the Government of India. Rajya Sabha, of which Giri had been ex-officio chairman as Vice President of India, adjourned for two days as a mark of respect to him.
Giri is regarded as a President who completely subordinated himself to the Prime Minister and has been described as a "Prime Minister’s President", a loyalist President and a rubber stamp President under whom the independence of the office eroded. When Giri's term ended in 1974, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi chose not to renominate him to the Presidency and instead chose Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed who was elected in the Presidential election of 1974.
