From The Wire India
New Delhi, December 27, 2024
Manmohan Singh, whose stewardship of India as Prime Minister from 2004 to 2014 saw the country post some of its highest growth rates and emerge on the global stage as a consequential power courted by capitals across the world, died on November 26, 2024 after a brief illness. He was 92 years old.
“With profound grief, we inform the (public about the) demise of the former Prime Minister of India Dr Manmohan Singh, aged 92. He was being treated for age-related medical conditions and had a sudden loss of consciousness at home on 26 December 2024,” the All India Institute for Medical Sciences said in a terse late-night statement on December 26.
“Resuscitative measures were started immediately at home. He was brought to the Medical Emergency at AIIMS, New Delhi at 8.06 pm. Despite all efforts, he could not be revived and was declared dead at 9.51 pm.”
PTI quoted government sources saying that his last rites would be conducted with full state honours and seven days of national mourning would be declared.
The Formative Years
Born in 1932 in the village of Gah in what the Punjab province of Pakistan is now and schooled first in his village and then in Peshawar, Manmohan Singh moved to India in 1947. Like millions uprooted by Partition, Singh’s family struggled to establish in the new home.
An economist by training, Manmohan Singh studied at both Cambridge, where he did his BA and MA under the legendary economists Joan Robinson and Nicholas Kaldor, and Oxford, writing a doctoral dissertation on India’s export performance. He returned to India to teach, first at Panjab University and then the Delhi School of Economics at Delhi University.
His skills in economics were put to the test in 1972 when he was appointed Chief Economic Adviser to the Union Ministry of Finance during Indira Gandhi’s Prime Ministership when Yashwantrao Chavan was the Finance Minister. From there, he went on to assume other significant economic positions, including Finance Secretary, Planning Commission Member and Reserve Bank of India Governor before becoming Finance Minister under Narasimha Rao in 1991.
Economic Reforms
It was in that job, which he held till 1996, that Singh truly rose to national and international prominence, ushering in a set of economic reforms – controversial at the time – that would eventually put the Indian economy on a higher growth path. Devaluing the Rupee, ending industrial controls and opening the door to foreign investment caused major dislocations whose benefits would only accrue in the decades that followed, even if they led to the Congress party’s defeat in 1996 by a centre-left coalition.
Singh would later remember his first Budget Speech from 1991, in which he used Victor Hugo’s famous quote, ‘No power on earth can stop an idea whose time has come.’
When the Congress had the chance to form the government in 2004 after its surprise triumph over Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s BJP, Congress Leader Sonia Gandhi decided to nominate Manmohan Singh as the Party’s Prime Ministerial choice.
The ‘accidental PM’ tag dogged Manmohan for the rest of his life, with critics attacking the dual power structure that emerged in which Sonia Gandhi wielded considerable influence over his government from behind the scenes.
The arrangement suited the technocratic leader that Manmohan Singh was, eager to implement his vision for the economy. But he also had political instincts that saw him take major initiatives, especially on the foreign policy front, which occasionally discomfited Sonia and the wider Congress structure she commanded.
Getting closer to the US
Despite reservations within the Party, he brought India and the United States closer together and successfully ended the nuclear isolation and technology denial regime the country had been subjected to since its first nuclear test in 1974. The civil nuclear agreement he struck in July 2005 with George W Bush, who was President of the United States at the time, eventually led to the Nuclear Suppliers Group lifting its ban on nuclear trade with India and was perhaps his most consequential diplomatic accomplishment.
Singh also played a key role in ensuring that the G20 steered the global economy out of the 2008 financial crisis.
It was with his own face front and centre that Manmohan Singh led the United Progressive Alliance government to victory in the 2009 general elections, despite the opposition BJP citing the November 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai by the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Tayyaba as evidence of his weakness.
Back-Channel Diplomacy
On the diplomatic front, Singh also actively engaged Pervez Musharraf – Pakistan’s military ruler – in seeking a non-territorial solution to the Jammu and Kashmir problem that would allow India and Pakistan to normalise economic relations and let the people of the erstwhile princely state have relations with each other across the Line of Control.
The back-channel diplomacy saw considerable progress but eventually ran aground, first due to Musharraf’s own domestic woes and then because of a series of spectacular terrorist attacks emanating from Pakistan.
As Prime Minister, Singh introduced three major reforms that impacted public life like never before: the Right to Information Act, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act and the amended Land Acquisition Act.
The rural employment guarantee scheme was Congress’s answer to the rural distress that the Vajpayee government had attempted to paper over with its slogan of ‘India Shining.’
But in his second term, beset by controversies surrounding the allocation of telecom spectrum and coal mining leases, he was pilloried by the opposition BJP and a major section of the media for causing a major loss to the exchequer. The accusations gained credibility because of reports by the Comptroller and Auditor General, even though as Prime Minister he moved quickly to arrest his Telecoms Minister, A Raja of the DMK, for his alleged involvement in what came to be called the 2G scam.
Ironically, the criminal cases initiated at the time all ran aground during the tenure of Narendra Modi as Prime Minister, leading to acquittals.
Singh’s tenure was also significant because he was the first member of a minority community to become Prime Minister of India. There was a certain poignancy to the fact that as a Sikh, it fell upon him to apologise for the massacre of Sikhs which took place in Delhi and other north Indian cities in the wake of Indira Gandhi’s assassination on October 31, 1984, a massacre in which his own Congress party was implicated.
Apology to Sikhs
Addressing Parliament on August 12, 2005 shortly after the Nanavati Commission’s Report on the killings, he said, “I have no hesitation in apologising to the Sikh community. I apologise not only to the Sikh community but to the whole Indian nation because what took place in 1984 is the negation of the concept of nationhood enshrined in our Constitution.”
His apology was widely seen as a rare act of statesmanship, as was his decision to sack Jagdish Tytler, a senior Congress leader named by the Commission.
“The PM apology and forced resignation of a Minister with long ties to the Gandhi family has surprised Indians who only expected the worst of their politicians,” a US embassy cable noted at the time.
“The PM’s singular act of political courage will be long-remembered as a momentous, almost Gandhian, moment of moral clarity in India’s long march to religious harmony.”
Leaders express grief
President Droupadi Murmu condoled Manmohan Singh’s death on X, saying that he was “one of those rare politicians who also straddled the worlds of academia and administration with equal ease.”
“In his various roles in public offices, he made critical contributions to reforming the Indian economy. He will always be remembered for his service to the nation, his unblemished political life and his utmost humility,” she said.
Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge said that he mourned “the loss of a lifelong senior colleague, a gentle intellectual and a humble soul who embodied the aspirations of India, having risen through the ranks with unwavering dedication.”
He said that Manmohan Singh was a “man of action rather than words”.
Paying tribute to Manmohan Singh, Congress leader Jairam Ramesh tweeted:
“Soft-spoken, sober, and always dignified, he had a steely resolve. He was the technocratic transformer of the Indian economy through his 1991, 1992, and other budgets. His Prime Ministership saw revolutionary legislation relating to rural employment, tribal rights, reservations for scheduled castes, scheduled tribes and OBCs, primary education, food security, and land acquisition.
“The Indo-US nuclear agreement was a landmark that enhanced India’s global status. His Prime Ministership saw the highest GDP growth rate in the country’s history.”
Lok Sabha leader of the Opposition and Congress MP for Raebareli Rahul Gandhi said he had “lost a mentor and guide.”
Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that Manmohan Singh was among India’s “most distinguished leaders.”
“Rising from humble origins, he rose to become a respected economist. He served in various government positions as well, including as Finance Minister, leaving a strong imprint on our economic policy over the years. His interventions in Parliament were also insightful,” Modi said on X.
He continued: “As our Prime Minister, he made extensive efforts to improve people’s lives,” adding that the two had “interacted regularly when he was PM and I was the CM of Gujarat” and discussed governance.
Affable and accessible, Manmohan Singh frequently interacted with reporters and was the last Indian Prime Minister to address Press Conferences. In his final Press Conference as the Prime Minister on January 3, 2014, he fielded questions that pointed to his inability to control his own Ministers.
“I honestly believe that history will be kinder to me than the contemporary media or for that matter, the Opposition Parties in Parliament,” he replied.
Manmohan Singh is survived by his wife Gursharan Kaur and three daughters, Upinder Singh, Daman Singh and Amrit Singh.
The above Report and pictures have been published under a special agreement with The Wire.
