Former Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who died on Thursday at the age of 92, initiated a transformative liberalization of the state-controlled economy during the 1991 currency crisis, leading the country to faster growth and increased global influence. It put us on a long-term trajectory.
As finance minister from 1991 to 1996, Mr. Singh overcame deep political resistance to end decades of isolation and stagnation, opening the door to expanded foreign trade and private investment, and bringing India into the global economy. The integration has started.
The Oxford-trained economist was known for his mild-mannered, unassuming demeanor and personal integrity, and went on to become Italian-born National Congress Party leader Sonia after his party’s shock victory in the 2004 elections. -Selected Prime Minister by Gandhi.
Gandhi believed that Singh was a safe, technocratic choice to lead India. Ms. Gandhi will not be a political rival to her young son, Mr. Rahul, who she was raising to eventually take over the party leadership.
During his tenure as prime minister, Singh’s hopes to continue India’s economic reforms were thwarted by his coalition partners in Congress, who opposed many of the policies he wanted.
His second term, starting in 2009, was seen as an opportunity to push for more dramatic reforms. However, he ended up becoming weak and isolated within the party as high-profile corruption scandals plagued his administration.
Born in 1932 in a rural village in what is now Pakistan, Singh was a member of the Sikh religion, and was a member of the Sikh religion when India under British rule was divided into Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan. He later moved to India.
He attended university in India, received a degree from Cambridge, a PhD in economics from Oxford, and wrote a dissertation and a book titled “India’s Export Trends and Prospects for Sustainable Growth.”
This challenged India’s prevailing export pessimism at the time and hindered India’s development for the next three decades. Singh then worked for several years at the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development.
He returned to India in 1969 to teach economics. Singh then became Economic Adviser to the Ministry of Commerce in 1971, beginning a long government career in which he held many senior positions, including Governor of the Reserve Bank of India.
But his fundamental role in transforming India came in 1991, when India was facing a severe currency crisis. The crisis forced India to send some of its gold reserves overseas as collateral for an IMF bailout loan.
Mr. Singh seized the opportunity to break with the anti-trade worldview that had dominated post-independence India and began the process of opening up the country’s tightly controlled, socialist-oriented economy to increased private and foreign investment. This brought an end to the era of chronic trade wars. low growth.
During his five-year term as Finance Minister, he and Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao took steps to dismantle the strict economic controls of the so-called License Raj, and India’s economic growth accelerated rapidly and 9 This laid the foundation for a record high close to the US dollar. percent, up from an average of about 2 to 3 percent.
In his first term as prime minister, starting in 2004, Mr. Singh created debt relief and job creation schemes for farmers and established social welfare programs to help those who had not yet benefited from India’s accelerating growth. I aimed.
He also sought to increase government transparency by implementing freedom of information laws similar to those in Western countries.
But the most important accomplishment was changing the relationship between Washington and New Delhi, which had imposed sanctions on India over its nuclear tests a decade ago.
In 2008, he risked his political future by working to win Congressional approval for a major civil nuclear deal with the United States, despite opposition from his left-wing former coalition partners and the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party. did.
Despite India’s refusal to abandon its nuclear weapons program, the successful parliamentary vote buried the legacy of Cold War animosity between the two countries, and at the same time renewed the relationship between Mr. Singh and then-US President George W. Bush. An unlikely friendship was sealed.
Later that year, after Pakistan-based militants launched a maritime terror attack in Mumbai that killed 170 people, Mr. Singh showed considerable restraint by resisting calls for harsh retaliation and threatened to set off a regional conflagration. avoided.
In hindsight, many of Mr. Singh’s advisers said he should have handed over the premiership to a younger leader after his 2009 election victory.
His second term was bitterly disappointed and paralyzed by corruption scandals, unruly allies, and an economy that retreated from double-digit growth amid persistently high inflation.
But during this time, he empowered Nandan Nilekani, co-founder of tech giant Infosys, to lead a team building an advanced biometric system known as Aadhaar, which would gradually help millions of poor Indians. This led to a significant improvement in the provision of welfare benefits to the public. .
Still, public disillusionment with Mr. Singh’s seeming inaction amidst worsening economic and political conditions paved the way for the election of Bharatiya Janata Party leader Narendra Modi in 2014, with Mr. Modi providing strong leadership. , promised faster job creation and accelerated growth.
Mr. Singh kept a low profile after his retirement, but occasionally criticized his successor’s performance in public. In 2019, he accused Prime Minister Modi of creating a “toxic” environment and a “climate of fear”, undermining business confidence and causing a sharp economic slowdown.
In 2014, during his final months as prime minister, Singh predicted that “history will be kinder to me than the modern media and, for that matter, the opposition.”
