Manmohan Singh, the architect of opening India’s economy to the world that lifted a record number out of poverty and set the stage for the nation to secure a seat at the global high table, died in New Delhi Thursday night. He was 92.
The former Prime Minister is survived by his wife Gursharan Kaur and three daughters. His passing was announced by the AIIMS which, in a bulletin, stated that he was brought to Emergency at 8.06 pm after “sudden loss of consciousness at home”. It said despite all efforts, he could not be revived and was declared dead at 9.51 pm. coffee tables
As Prime Minister from 2004 to 2014, Singh broke the country’s long nuclear winter, steered it successfully through the global financial crisis and marked a place for the country in the new world order.
An unlikely politician, the scholarly, soft-spoken academic-politician — born in Gah in what is today Pakistan, his family migrated to India during Partition; he was an alumnus of both Oxford and Cambridge universities — believed in the importance of the free market and at the same time redefined the role of the welfare state when he was PM.
Under him, the UPA government, in its 10 years at the Centre, ushered in a second wave of financial reforms and unveiled a raft of welfare measures, breaking the long held belief that economic reforms and social welfare cannot go hand in hand.
The economic reforms steered by Singh as Finance Minister, under the watch of P V Narasimha Rao in the 1990s, and the policies employed by the UPA government with him at the helm as Prime Minister spurred industrial growth, lifted millions out of poverty, swelled the middle class and revitalised Indian business.
He steered the landmark Indo-US nuclear deal which gave a glimpse of Singh the politician – it was always understated.
He put his government on the line, resisted and rebuffed the Left’s pressure tactics, but in the end managed to salvage the nuclear deal and his government. He showed his party, Opposition and the political class that he knew the art of realpolitik too. Likewise, he weathered many crises in his Cabinet, pulls and pressures from the Congress but managed to stay afloat. Rahul Gandhi’s 2013 ordinance-tearing antics hurt him and prompted him to step down but the elderly statesman in him gave in to persuasion by his colleagues and he stayed on. He later told The Indian Express that Rahul had subsequently apologised to him.
The first Sikh to become Prime Minister, he was also the first PM after Jawaharlal Nehru to be returned to office after a full term. But his second term as Prime Minister was buffeted with controversies and corruption charges against his government, which led to the ouster of the Congress from power in 2014. The party has not been able to recover since.
The Opposition had dubbed him a “weak PM” but Singh believed in the supremacy of the party. The power sharing model – Singh as Prime Minister and Sonia Gandhi as NAC head and UPA chairperson – led to the belief that he was being undermined. “While power was delegated, authority was not,” Singh’s former media advisor Sanjaya Baru said in his book The Accidental Prime Minister: The Making and Unmaking of Manmohan Singh.
“You see, you must understand one thing. I have come to terms with this. There cannot be two centres of power. That creates confusion. I have to accept that the party president is the centre of power. The government is answerable to the party,” Baru quoted Singh as telling him.
Starting his career as Economic Advisor in the Ministry of Foreign Trade in the early 1970s – he later held several posts including that of RBI Governor, Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission and Chairman of the UGC – Singh’s life and India’s economic course changed when he took over as Finance Minister in the Narasimha Rao government in 1991.
Singh was a consensus politician with strong convictions. And he had a rare skill: of not letting ego and verbosity get the better of him, a break with his ilk.
Much admired and criticised, Singh, a six-term Rajya Sabha MP, deployed a mix of conviction and tact all through his storied political life, sometimes surprising and many a time disarming and confusing his peers, friends and rivals who would tend to underestimate his political acumen.
When the Left made life difficult for him, Singh did not flinch. He engaged them in dialogue but kept the nuclear deal alive. And when the time came, he delivered a tough message to Prakash Karat and company – that India cannot renegotiate the deal and if they want to withdraw support to his government, they can.
He then secured the support of Samajwadi Party in a crucial trust vote in July 2008 and turned the tables on the Opposition.
But Singh, who former US President Barack Obama reckoned as a man of “uncommon wisdom and decency”, was rarely ready for an open confrontation.
But he was firm on his convictions at times – his desire to push the contentious and ambitious nuclear deal at any cost, for instance, stunned many even in the Congress – and amenable to persuasion or rather capitulation to the party’s (read Sonia Gandhi) diktat on occasions. He was not reluctant to be seen as playing second fiddle, rather he used it as his strength. It was a trait uncommon among career politicians. But it was perhaps that skill that helped him navigate the treacherous and choppy terrain of politics. As Finance Minister, he was the silent force behind the 1991 economic reforms but the political face was Narasimha Rao and he bore the fallout.
Leader of the Opposition in Rajya Sabha from the A B Vajpayee era, Singh was the surprise choice for Prime Minister in 2004 when Sonia Gandhi turned down the post in the wake of her foreign origin controversy. He had contested Lok Sabha only once by then, that, too, unsuccessfully. He had lost from South Delhi in 1999.
Despite a divided party and recalcitrant allies, Singh’s tenure as PM is considered a turning point for India’s foreign policy. There was a gradual departure from the Nehruvian policy of non-alignment as New Delhi forged closer ties with the US on a more equal footing.
Singh steered India through the global financial crisis successfully, prompting Obama to say later that “when the Prime Minister speaks, people listen, particularly because of his deep knowledge of economic issues, as well as the fact that he understands that as India rises as a world power, not just a regional power, that it also has enormous responsibilities to work with the rest of the world community around issues of peace and prosperity”.
Despite that, the buzzwords during the UPA II government were policy paralysis and corruption, which dented his image. The BJP often alleged that he was weak and was remote-controlled by Gandhi.
But Singh knew his legacy would ensure. “I honestly believe that history will be kinder to me than the contemporary media, or for that matter, the Opposition parties in Parliament. I cannot divulge all things that take place in the Cabinet system of government. I think, taking into account the circumstances, and the compulsions of a coalition polity, I have done as best as I could under the circumstances,” he had said toward the end of his term.
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Manmohan Singh was a pivotal figure in India's foreign policy, elevating its global standing through the Indo-US nuclear deal. He fostered strong relationships with major countries and played a key role in forming the Quad. Singh also pursued peaceful ties with Pakistan and improved relations with neighboring countries, emphasizing the importance of stability and mutual benefits.
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