When Manmohan Singh was asked during a sparse interaction with journalists in early 2014 what he thought his legacy would be, the Indian prime minister didn’t have to think long. “I sincerely believe,” replied Singh, who died on Thursday at the age of 92, “that history will judge me more kindly than the contemporary press.”
Singh’s words at that moment were more hope than prophecy. It was not only among journalists that love for the silent technocrat who dragged India through its worst economic crisis ever in the early 1990s had waned. A series of corruption scandals, a sputtering economy and rising inflation had clouded the memory of this.
Qualities that previously made Singh popular – his timidity, modesty – were now held against him. Singh was indecisive and lacked direction. ‘Dr Dolittle’, called the weekly IndiaToday him on her cover. Time Magazine went further and baptized him ‘The Underachiever’. The man who performed below expectations.
The rare press conference, Singh’s third in a decade as prime minister, was in some ways a capitulation. Singh announced that he would not stay on for a third term if his Congress party wins again. He made way for Rahul Gandhi, the youngest member of the dynasty that ruled India for decades and from whose shadow Singh could never fully escape.
It didn’t get that far. Singh’s Congress Party was mercilessly defeated in the elections a few months later by a man who was his opposite in almost everything: Narendra Modi, a born orator with a deep, heavy bass voice and authoritarian tendencies.
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It was a sad exit for someone whose policies lifted millions of Indians out of poverty. But Singh, who himself grew up in relative poverty, was always more bureaucrat than politician. An economist who studied at Cambridge University and Oxford thanks to scholarships, worked for the United Nations and then rose within the Indian civil service.
Sky blue turban
Singh, a Sikh whose sky-blue turban became his trademark, was born on September 26, 1932 in Gah, a village in western Punjab that is now in Pakistan. In the early summer of 1947, the family fled to Amritsar: Singh’s father anticipated the bloodshed that would follow shortly afterwards with the partition of Pakistan and India.
It is an episode that the reserved Singh shared little about. He didn’t think it was necessary to talk about his personal life, it was about his work. And Singh excelled in that. He held virtually every major economic position in India, from advisor to then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi to Governor of the Central Bank.
The role that would define him followed in 1991. “Accidental”, Singh would say about this later. Unintentionally. Because someone else was actually asked for the post of Minister of Finance. But when he said thank you, the then 58-year-old Singh’s phone rang.
It was a time when the world order was shaken by the fall of communism and the Gulf War. India, meanwhile, was dealing with its own trauma following the death of Rajiv Gandhi, the Congress Party’s prime ministerial candidate who, like his mother Indira, was murdered. And then the country was on the brink of bankruptcy.
Partly due to the sudden rise in oil prices, India had just enough reserves to be able to import raw materials and food for another two weeks. The need was so great that the government shipped a large part of its gold reserves to banks in Switzerland and London to obtain hundreds of millions in loans. It wasn’t enough.
As a newly minted minister, Singh did the impossible: he opened up India’s socialist planned economy. Singh devalued the rupee, cut import tariffs, opened the door to foreign investment and initiated the end of the License Raj, the rigid licensing system that dictated to manufacturers what they could produce.
Economic superpower
In his maiden speech before parliament he declared his end goal in the words of the French writer Victor Hugo: “There is no power on earth that can stop an idea whose time has come.” That idea, according to Singh, was an India that would claim its place on the world stage as an economic superpower. “India is wide awake.”
What followed was an economic one tree with growth rates of 8 to 9 percent. It is not surprising that the financial markets responded enthusiastically when Singh was put forward as Prime Minister by his party in 2009, the first Sikh ever. Unintentionally, again: that role actually belonged to Sonia Gandhi, widow of Rajiv and leader of the Congress Party.
She decided differently, partly after attacks on her Italian-Catholic origins. Singh was a safe alternative. Respected, knowledgeable, but without a political support base that would make him too influential (he ran for office once and lost).
“I am just a small person who has been put in this big chair,” Singh himself described it in an interview with American journalist Charlie Rose.
The result was a confusing dynamic, with Gandhi continuing to pull the strings from the wings. This was reflected in the policy, with Singh’s pragmatic stamp on further liberalization and privatization and that of the socialist Gandhi on ambitious welfare programs to provide employment for the poor.
Singh’s biggest success in his first term was striking a nuclear deal with the United States. It nearly brought down his government, with the Communist Party withdrawing from their coalition. But Singh survived. In fact, the Congress Party was re-elected not long afterwards with an even larger mandate.
Immaculate Singh
Then things went wrong quickly. Corruption scandal after corruption scandal came to light. Covered up funds for the Commonwealth Games, kickbacks in exchange for cheap licenses for 2G networks and coal mining allocations. Even the hitherto unblemished Singh, who was Coal Minister, got involved.
Meanwhile, the economy slumped and the cracks between him and Sonia Gandhi became visible. The friendly Prime Minister began to appear sullen and lifeless. Instead of tempering criticism and taking action against his corrupt ministers, Singh remained silent or pointed accusations at others. He was not forgiven.
After his premiership, Singh, already in his eighties and having undergone several heart operations, remained a member of the Indian House of Lords. He put aside his reluctance to talk to journalists in recent years to warn about what he sees as the dangerous policies of the Modi government. “Our place on the world stage is at stake,” he wrote TheHindu.
The place that Singh hoped, he told journalist Charlie Rose at the time, would have earned him a “footnote in India’s long history.”