IndiaWho was Manmohan Singh?
Manmohan Singh was born in 1932 in a village in the Punjab province of undivided India, now in Pakistan. He studied economics at Panjab University, Cambridge and Oxford, then taught and served as chief economic adviser, governor of the Reserve Bank of India and deputy chairman of the Planning Commission. Appointed finance minister in 1991 during a balance of payments crisis, he launched sweeping economic reforms. He became prime minister in 2004 when Sonia Gandhi declined the post, and was re-elected in 2009. He was India's first Sikh prime minister. He died in December 2024.
Political views
As finance minister in 1991, cut taxes, devalued the rupee, privatised state-run companies and encouraged foreign investment.
Source: bbc.comWrote an early academic critique of India's inward-oriented trade policy.
Source: pmindia.gov.inBacked the idea of inclusive growth and passed laws giving citizens rights to food, education, work and information.
Source: inc.inIntroduced a rural employment scheme guaranteeing a minimum of 100 days' work and launched the Aadhaar identity project to deliver welfare.
Source: bbc.comSigned a 2008 civil nuclear deal with the United States to end India's nuclear isolation, despite the Left Front withdrawing support from his government.
Source: bbc.comFormally apologised in parliament in 2005 for the 1984 anti-Sikh riots, calling them a negation of the concept of nationhood in the constitution.
Source: bbc.comContinued the peace process with Pakistan and sought to settle the border dispute with China.
Source: bbc.com
Legacy
Admirers credit Singh with rescuing India from bankruptcy in 1991 and with a decade in which India became one of the world's fastest-growing major economies, and he was widely respected for his personal integrity and modesty. The BBC notes that his reforms helped lift millions out of poverty. Critics called him a weak or 'remote-controlled' prime minister dependent on Sonia Gandhi, and his second term was marred by corruption scandals involving cabinet colleagues, including the allocation of coal licences, and by policy paralysis. He hoped history would be kinder to him than the contemporary media.
In their words
No power on earth can stop an idea whose time has come. I suggest to this august House that the emergence of India as a major economic power in the world happens to be one such idea.