Former Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who died at the age of 92 on Thursday, launched a transformative liberalization of the state-controlled economy during the 1991 currency crisis, setting the country on a long-term path to recession. Faster growth And increasing global influence.
When Singh was finance minister from 1991 to 1996, he overcame entrenched political resistance to end decades of isolation and stagnation, open India to greater foreign trade and private investment, and begin its integration into the global economy.
This Oxford-trained economist, known for his moderate, unassuming style and personal integrity, was later appointed by Sonia Gandhi, the Italian-born leader of the Congress Party, to take over as prime minister after the party’s surprise electoral victory in 2004.
Gandhi viewed Singh as a safe technocratic choice for India’s leadership, who would not emerge as a political rival to her or her young son Rahul, whom she was grooming to eventually take over the party’s leadership.
During his premiership, Singh’s hopes of continuing economic reforms in India were frustrated by his coalition partners in the Congress Party, who objected to many of the measures he wished to take.
His second term in office starting in 2009 was seen as an opportunity to move forward with more dramatic reforms. But he ended up weak and isolated within his party with high-profile corruption scandals plaguing his administration.
Born in 1932 in a rural village in what is today Pakistan, Singh, a member of the Sikh faith, immigrated to India when British-ruled India was divided into Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan.
He went to university in India, then earned a degree from Cambridge and a PhD in economics from Oxford, and wrote a thesis and book titled “Indian Export Trends and Prospects for Sustainable Growth.”
He challenged the pessimism that prevailed in India in the export field at that time and that blighted its development for another three decades. Singh subsequently worked for several years at the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development.
In 1969, he returned to India to teach economics. Then in 1971, Singh took up a position as economic advisor in the Ministry of Commerce, the beginning of a long career in government service where he held several senior positions, including Governor of the Reserve Bank of India.
But his key role in transforming India came in 1991, when it was facing a severe foreign exchange crisis, which forced the country to transfer some of its gold reserves abroad as collateral for a bailout loan from the International Monetary Fund.
Singh took the opportunity to break with the anti-trade worldview that had dominated post-independence India, and begin the tightly controlled process of opening up the country. Socialist command economy and increased private and foreign investment, bringing an end to an era of chronically low growth.
His steps, along with Prime Minister B.V. Narasimha Rao, to dismantle the so-called “License Raj” of stringent economic controls during his five-year stint as Finance Minister, laid the foundation for accelerating India’s economic growth, reaching an all-time high of about 9%. cent, an increase of 2 to 3 percent on average.
In his first term as prime minister since 2004, Singh laid out plans for debt relief and job creation for farmers, and sought to establish social welfare programs to help those who had not yet benefited from India’s accelerating growth.
He also tried to bring more transparency to the government by implementing a Freedom of Information Act, similar to those in the West.
But the most important achievement was the transformation of New Delhi’s relationship with Washington, which imposed sanctions on India over its nuclear tests a decade ago.
In 2008, he staked his political future on seeking parliamentary approval for a major civil nuclear deal with the United States, despite opposition from former left-wing coalition partners and the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party.
The successful parliamentary vote buried the legacy of Cold War hostility between the two countries despite India’s refusal to give up its nuclear weapons programme, while confirming Singh’s unlikely friendship with then US President George W. Bush.
Later that year, after Pakistan-based militants launched a seaborne terrorist attack on Mumbai, killing 170 people, Singh showed great restraint by resisting calls for harsh retaliation, thus averting a potential regional conflagration.
In hindsight, several of Singh’s advisers said he should have handed the prime ministership to a younger leader after winning the 2009 election.
His second term was filled with disillusionment and paralysis, marred by corruption scandals, unruly allies and an economy that was reeling from more than 10% growth amid stubbornly high inflation.
However, during this time, he empowered him Nandan Nilekania co-founder of technology giant Infosys, was appointed to lead a team that built an advanced biometric identification system known as Aadhaarwhich gradually led to massive improvements in the provision of welfare payments to millions of poor Indians.
However, public disillusionment with Singh’s apparent inaction as economic and political conditions deteriorated paved the way for the election of BJP leader Narendra Modi in 2014, who promised strong leadership, faster job creation, and accelerated growth.
Singh has kept a low profile after retirement, although he has occasionally made public criticism of his successor’s performance. In 2019, Modi was accused of creating a “toxic” and “Climate of fearThis led to a sharp economic slowdown by undermining business confidence.
During his final months as Prime Minister, in 2014, Singh predicted that “history will be kinder to me than the contemporary media, or the opposition parties for that matter.”