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Manmohan Singh is recognized as the architect of major liberalization reforms in India.
Former Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has died at the age of 92.
Singh was one of India's longest-serving prime ministers and was considered the architect of major liberalizing economic reforms, serving as prime minister from 2004 to 2014 and before that as finance minister.
He had been admitted to a hospital in the capital Delhi after his health deteriorated, according to reports.
Singh was the first Indian leader since Jawaharlal Nehru to be re-elected after serving a first full term, and the first Sikh to hold the country's highest office. He made a public apology in Parliament for the 1984 riots in which some 3,000 Sikhs were killed.
But his second term was marred by a series of corruption allegations that dogged his administration. Many believe these scandals were partly responsible for his Congress party's crushing defeat in the 2014 general elections.
Singh was born on September 26, 1932, in a desolate village in the Punjab province of undivided India, which lacked water and electricity.
After attending Panjab University, he earned a master's degree at Cambridge University and then a doctorate in philosophy at Oxford.
While studying at Cambridge, lack of funds bothered Singh, his daughter, Daman Singh, wrote in a book about her parents.
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Singh was often referred to as the 'accidental prime minister'
“His tuition and living expenses amounted to about £600 a year. The Panjab University scholarship gave him about £160. For the rest he had to depend on his father. Manmohan took care to live very miserly .Subsidized meals in the dining room were relatively cheap at two shillings sixpence.
Daman Singh remembers his father as “completely helpless at home and unable to boil an egg or turn on the television.”
Consensus generator
Singh rose to political prominence as India's finance minister in 1991, taking over as the country plunged into bankruptcy.
His unexpected appointment capped a long and illustrious career as an academic and civil servant: he served as economic adviser to the government and became governor of the central bank of India.
In his first speech as finance minister, he quoted Victor Hugo, saying that “no power on Earth can stop an idea whose time has come.”
This served as the springboard for an ambitious and unprecedented economic reform program: he cut taxes, devalued the rupee, privatized state-owned enterprises and encouraged foreign investment.
The economy recovered, industry recovered, inflation was brought under control, and growth rates remained consistently high through the 1990s.
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Singh was born in Gah, an underdeveloped village in what is now Pakistan.
“Accidental PM”
Manmohan Singh was a man acutely aware of his lack of political base. “It’s good to be a statesman, but to be a statesman in a democracy you first have to win elections,” he once said.
When he attempted to win elections to India's lower house in 1999, he was defeated. Instead, he served in the upper house, chosen by his own party in Congress.
The same thing happened in 2004, when Singh was first appointed prime minister after Congress president Sonia Gandhi turned down the post – apparently to protect the party from damaging attacks on its Italian origins. Critics, however, claimed that Sonia Gandhi was the real source of power when he was prime minister and was never truly in charge.
AFP
Critics said Mr Singh had always played second fiddle to Sonia Gandhi.
The greatest triumph of his first five-year term was bringing India out of its nuclear isolation by signing a historic deal guaranteeing access to American nuclear technology.
But the deal came at a price: the government's communist allies withdrew their support after protesting the deal, and Congress had to make up for lost numbers by securing the support of another party against a backdrop of accusations of vote buying.
As a consensus builder, Singh presided over a coalition of sometimes difficult, assertive and potentially unruly regional coalition allies and supporters.
Although he gained respect for his integrity and intelligence, he also had a reputation for being meek and indecisive. Some critics said the pace of reforms had slowed and that he had failed to achieve the same momentum he had when he was finance minister.
AFP
The greatest triumph of Mr Singh's first five-year term was bringing India out of its nuclear isolation by signing a historic deal with the United States.
When Singh guided the Congress to a decisive second electoral victory in 2009, he vowed that the party would “rise to the occasion”.
But the shine quickly began to fade, and his second term made headlines mostly for the wrong reasons: several scandals involving his ministers that reportedly cost the country billions of dollars, a Parliament blocked by the opposition and a huge political paralysis. this led to a serious economic downturn.
LK Advani, a senior leader of the rival BJP party, called Singh India's “weakest prime minister”.
Manmohan Singh defended his record, saying his government had worked with “utmost commitment and dedication to the country and the welfare of its people.”
A pragmatic foreign policy
Singh adopted the pragmatic foreign policy pursued by his two predecessors.
He continued the peace process with Pakistan, although that process was hampered by attacks blamed on Pakistani militants, culminating in the November 2008 Mumbai shooting and bombing.
He tried to end the border conflict with China, brokering a deal to reopen the Nathu La pass to Tibet, closed for more than 40 years.
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Singh with his daughter Upinder Singh (right) and his wife Gursharan Kaur (left)
Singh increased his financial support for Afghanistan and became the first Indian leader to visit the country in almost 30 years.
He also angered many opposition politicians by appearing to end relations with India's old ally Iran.
A discreet leader
A former academic and studious bureaucrat, he was known for being retiring and always keeping a low profile. His social media account was best known for boring entries and had a limited number of followers.
A man of few words, his calm demeanor nevertheless earned him many admirers.
Responding to questions about a coal scandal involving the illegal awarding of licenses worth billions of dollars, he defended his silence on the issue by saying it was “better than thousands of answers”.
AFP
Singh's opponents accused him of being involved in a 2012 coal scandal.
In 2015, he was summoned to court to answer allegations of criminal conspiracy, breach of trust and corruption-related offences. An upset Singh told reporters that he was “open to legal scrutiny” and that “the truth would prevail.”
After serving as prime minister, Singh remained deeply engaged in current issues as a senior leader of the main opposition Congress party, despite his advanced age.
In August 2020, he told the BBC in a rare interview that India needed to take three steps “immediately” to stem the economic damage from the coronavirus pandemic, which had plunged the country's economy into a recession.
The government must provide direct cash aid to people, make capital available to businesses and repair the financial sector, he said.
History will remember Singh for leading India out of its economic and nuclear isolation, although some historians might suggest he should have retired earlier.
“I honestly believe that history will be kinder to me than the contemporary media, or for that matter the opposition parties in Parliament,” he told an interviewer in 2014.
Singh is survived by his wife and three daughters.
