Who was Manmohan Singh?
A village in Punjab, then part of British India and now in Pakistan, was where Manmohan Singh was born in 1932. His economics degrees came from Panjab University, Cambridge and Oxford. He later taught, advised the government and ran the Reserve Bank of India. In 1991 India faced a foreign currency crisis, and he was made finance minister. He launched sweeping economic reforms. Sonia Gandhi turned down the top job in 2004, and Singh became prime minister, winning again in 2009. He was the country's first Sikh prime minister and served until 2014. He died in December 2024.
Political views
- In 1991 he lowered taxes, let the rupee lose value, sold some state-run companies and invited foreign investors in.Source: bbc.com
- He argued for growth that includes the poor, and his governments passed laws giving people legal rights to food, schooling, work and information.Source: inc.in
- He brought in a rural jobs scheme that promised at least 100 days of work, and he started the Aadhaar ID project as a way to deliver welfare.Source: bbc.com
- Early in his career he wrote an academic critique of India's inward-looking trade policy.Source: pmindia.gov.in
- His 2008 nuclear agreement with the US, covering civilian use, ended India's isolation on nuclear matters. The Left Front withdrew its backing from his government over it.Source: bbc.com
- He kept the peace process with Pakistan alive and tried to resolve the border row with China.Source: bbc.com
- In 2005 he apologized in parliament for the anti-Sikh riots of 1984, describing them as a negation of the idea of nationhood in the constitution.Source: bbc.com
Legacy
Admirers say Singh pulled India back from bankruptcy in 1991 and led a decade in which it became one of the fastest-growing big economies. He was widely admired for his honesty and modest manner, and the BBC says his reforms helped lift millions out of poverty. Some critics, though, called him a weak prime minister who took orders from Sonia Gandhi, and they point to corruption scandals in his second term, including the coal licence affair, and to a government that seemed frozen. Singh himself hoped history would judge him more kindly than the media of his day did.
In their own 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.”