Dr Manmohan Singh (1932-2024): The economist who would be PM
Manmohan Singh, who died at 92 on Thursday night, was a man of many legacies in a political firmament in which far more entrenched career politicians struggle to make a mark. He first secured his spot in India’s political map as executor—under the stewardship of PV Narasimha Rao—of the landmark economic liberalisation programme that broke the shackles of the licence raj and opened up India’s socialist-oriented economic policies to the free market, ushering in the era of rising economic growth and the emergence of the aspirational Indian. Those policies would ultimately result in India becoming one of the world’s fastest-growing major economies.
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He was finance minister in the Rao government from 1991 to 1996, having been RBI governor in 1982-85 as well as CEA in the 1970s. He would go on to serve as PM from 2004 to 2014.
Story of Grit and Determination
Singh was the first Indian technocrat to reach the pinnacle of power in the political world, becoming the longest-serving Congress Prime Minister from outside the Nehru-Gandhi family, that too with two consecutive full terms, something that no one had achieved after Jawaharlal Nehru, before Narendra Modi equalled the first PM’s three consecutive electoral victories this year.
What many dyed-in-the-wool politicians admired, and envied, was what they saw as his
