A scholar Prime Minister

Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time

H W Longfellow
Psalm of Life

These lines aptly signpost the inspiring legacy that India’s former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, our first PM from a minority faith, and one who was neither a career politician nor a directly elected representative of the people, left behind when he shuffled off his mortal coil on December 26, 2024.

Former Prime Minister of India Dr Manmohan Singh

Dr Singh was a man of few words but someone who always knew his mind and weighed the import of every word he used. A scholar and a statesman, he never shied away from a challenge and rose from humble beginnings as a Sikh refugee from the partition-torn west Punjab village of Gah in today’s Pakistan to the highest executive office in India in 2004.

A self-made man, Dr Singh realised early in his life the value of education. With the help of publicly funded merit scholarships and educational grants he completed Masters in Economics from the Panjab University in 1954 before embarking to the United Kingdom to further pursue his study of economics. An Economics Tripos from the Cambridge University and a DPhil from the Oxford University rounded off his education.

Through merit scholarships and educational grants he completed Masters in Economics in Punjab and then went to UK to further pursue his study of economics at Cambridge and Oxford Universities.

His doctoral thesis on ‘India’s Export Trends and Prospects for Self-Sustained Growth’ — in which he emphasised the need for developing economies to jettison their insular approach of import substitution and instead embrace free trade — was the seminal work that would go on to inform and undergird the sweeping economic reforms he ushered in, in 1991, setting the country on a new trajectory of higher economic growth and integration with the global economy.

Earlier, his relatively short stints at the UN’s trade body UNCTAD in New York, and then as a professor of International Trade at the Delhi School of Economics were stepping stones to a long and distinguished career in public service.

With Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Starting in 1971 as an economic adviser in the Ministry of Foreign Trade, Dr Singh went on to hold several key economic policy positions in the central government including secretary, Economic Affairs, in the Ministry of Finance and later served as the Reserve Bank governor for a three-year term in the early 1980s.

Stints at the Planning Commission, and the Geneva-based South Commission helped broaden, hone and anchor his policy positions from the wider perspective of social relevance and a development paradigm that placed the reduction of inequality in society in the forefront.

Taking over as finance minister when a bruising balance of payments crisis had left our economy teetering on the edge of an abyss, the experienced economist ushered in the epochal reforms that prepared our arrival on the global stage.

And so in June 1991, when Prime Minister P V Narasimha Rao named Dr Singh to oversee the crucial Finance portfolio at a time when a bruising balance of payments crisis had left the country’s economy teetering on the edge of an abyss, the experienced economist quietly took on the sherpa’s role and ushered in the epochal reforms that set the course for India’s ascent to and arrival on the global stage.

With former PM A B Vajpayee.

Concluding his famous Budget speech in July 1991, Dr Singh reflected on his roots and made a solemn promise: “I was born in a poor family in a chronically drought-prone village which is now part of Pakistan. University scholarships and grants made it possible for me to go to college in India as well as in England. This country has honoured me by appointing me to some of the most important public offices of our sovereign Republic. This is a debt which I can never fully repay. The best I can do is to pledge myself to serve our country with utmost sincerity and dedication. This I promise to the House.”

True to this pledge, he ensured that the policy frameworks he orchestrated over the next five years helped ensure that the Indian economy gradually but irrevocably proceeded on a path of deregulation and liberalisation: opening up to investment, overseas competition and new ventures across a range of sectors from computer hardware and automobile manufacturing to the development and export of information technology and BPO services.

And 13 years later, when the Congress was returned to power as the head of the United Progressive Alliance, the party’s supremo Sonia Gandhi turned to the architect of modern India’s economic transformation to helm the coalition government. Destiny had catapulted the distinguished technocrat to the highest executive office in the land.

With the then Congress president Sonia Gandhi.

Always conscious of the need to ensure that the government’s economic policies, and particularly its new-found embrace of capitalism, did not widen economic disparities, Dr Singh had stressed in his maiden Budget speech in 1991: “We must restore the creation of wealth to its proper place in the development process. For, without it, we cannot remove the stigma of abject poverty, ignorance and disease. But we cannot accept social misery and inequity as unavoidable in the process of creation of wealth. The basic challenge of our times is to ensure that wealth creation is not only tempered by equity and justice but is harnessed to the goal of removal of poverty and development for all.”

This concern for the public’s well-being would be a defining feature of Dr Singh’s understanding of politics and the conduct of his political life, first as the finance minister and later as the Prime Minister.

Speaking to journalist Karan Thapar on the BBC’s Hard Talk programme in 1999, when he made his only and unsuccessful attempt to win a Lok Sabha seat as the Congress candidate, contesting from South Delhi, Dr Singh observed: “Politics unfortunately has ceased in many ways to be a vehicle for social change.” He was in politics, he stressed, to try and make a difference by ensuring that policies were always transparent and informed by the need to address the common people’s concerns.

Always dignified, even when faced with the most vituperative attacks by the domestic media and the political opposition, Dr Singh set a new benchmark for decency and integrity in public life that won him international recognition and accolades.

I was born in a poor family in a chronically drought-prone village which is now part of Pakistan. University scholarships and grants made it possible for me to go to college in India and England.
– Former PM Dr Manmohan Singh

Former US President Barack Obama, writing in his memoir, described Dr Singh as “wise, thoughtful and scrupulously honest”, and “a self-effacing technocrat who’d won people’s trust not by appealing to their passions but by bringing about higher living standards and maintaining a well-earned reputation for not being corrupt.”

Never one to shy away from meeting the press or answering the toughest of questions with utter equanimity and poise, Dr Singh’s press conference as PM in January 2014 revealed the man’s boundless capacity for grace under pressure. Asked how he thought the common man perceived him as a politician and as PM, he said: “I am the same person as I was years ago. There has been no change. I say it in all sincerity that I have tried to serve this country with utmost dedication and commitment and utmost integrity. I have never used my office to enrich or to reward my friends or my relatives.” And to another question on how he viewed his legacy, he replied with the famous words: “I honestly believe that history will be kinder to me than the contemporary media, or for that matter, the Opposition parties in Parliament.”

Ultimately, what will mark Dr Singh apart as a man of “uncommon wisdom” was his prescience in warning of the perils that a less inclusive and unchecked globalisation posed to the world’s social and economic order. As country after country lurches increasingly rightwards, with populist political platforms espousing ultra-nationalistic and anti-immigrant views gaining electoral legitimacy, it is but imperative that we remind ourselves of these words Dr Singh spoke as far back as in October 2006 while accepting an honorary Doctor of Law degree conferred on him by the Cambridge University:

“These achievements of the era of globalisation should not blind us to the new anxieties that globalisation has brought in its wake. The reach of globalisation is yet to touch many parts of the world. Moreover, the evidence suggests that the process has not removed personal and regional income disparities. In many developing countries growth is bypassing the rural areas.

The gap between the rich and the poor is widening. This, coupled with the inability of the public sector to provide adequate and quality services in health and education, and cater to the needs of the poor, is causing resentment and alienation. This is nurturing divisive forces and putting pressure on the practice of democracy.

These are real and palpable concerns and they cannot be ignored… We need to work for inclusive globalisation. This calls for a new global vision.”

Dr Singh’s life including his political and personal achievements leaves a lasting legacy beyond the world of economics, a legacy of how even in the midst of the hurly-burly of partisan politics one can always remain soft-spoken, polite, decorous and dignified.

The writer is former Business Editor of  The Hindu

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