Former Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, the first person of India's minority Sikh faith to hold that office, died in New Delhi on Thursday at age 92. A renowned economist, he was known as the father of economic reforms in India but was seen as a weak leader by many, including some within his party, the Indian National Congress.
“India mourns the loss of one of its most distinguished leaders, Dr. Manmohan Singh Ji,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi posted on X. “Rising from humble origins, he rose to become a respected economist. … As our Prime Minister, he made extensive efforts to improve people's lives.”
Singh served as prime minister between 2004 and 2014, but political commentators say it was his time as finance minister in the early 1990s that was most significant. His policies during that period set India on the path of economic liberalization and globalization.
“Wise, thoughtful, and scrupulously honest” is how former U.S. President Barack Obama described Singh in his memoir A Promised Land.
Singh was born on Sept. 26, 1932, in a village called Gah in what is now Pakistan. His family migrated east when Great Britain divided the subcontinent into independent India and the Muslim-majority nation of Pakistan in 1947. The partition triggered mass migration and sectarian violence that killed hundreds of thousands of people, including Singh's grandfather.
An Oxford-educated economist, Singh in 1991 drafted what economists call one of the most radical budgets in India's history: It opened up the country to the free market.
“Let the whole world hear it loud and clear. India is now wide awake,” Singh proclaimed during his budget speech.
“The budget declaration was a shocker because it almost turned on its head most of what was the received economic wisdom of the day,” says Rajesh Chakrabarti, a finance and public policy expert.
Until 1991, Chakrabarti explains, India had been a socialist, public sector-dominated and import-restricted economy. When Singh became finance minister, the situation was dire. India was in a severe balance of payments crisis.
“We were importing far, far more than what we were exporting, and our foreign exchange reserves had touched a low,” says Chakrabarti. “India had to actually ship out gold — that means physically putting its gold reserves in ships and sending them to [banks in] London, to get money for running the economy.”
Singh's landmark budget opened India's economy to foreign direct investment, cut import duties and put an end to the Permit Raj, a complex system of regulations and red tape that discouraged private investment.
In 2004, Singh was once again thrust into the limelight when Sonia Gandhi, the Italian-born matriarch of the Congress party, named Singh to the top job after she declined to become the prime minister following the party's landslide victory.
But critics called him the Gandhis' “puppet,” ridiculed his soft-spoken manner and said he lacked oratory skills.
“Humility was his strength and, at some level, his weakness, because he could not play to the gallery,” says Rasheed Kidwai, author of a book on the Congress party.
Even so, he steered India through several international and domestic crises, says Kidwai.
“When the world economy tottered in 2008, India stood firmly,” he says. While Singh was in office, “there was no confrontation with difficult neighbors like Pakistan and China,” despite a deadly 2008 terrorist attack in Mumbai by Pakistani militants.
Kidwai says Singh was particularly successful when it came to foreign policy. “He was not one-dimensional,” he says. “[Singh] had very good relations and functional ties with Iran, and at the same time he was highly welcomed in Saudi Arabia.”
Under Singh's leadership, India drew closer to the U.S. on multiple fronts. Notably, the two countries agreed to a nuclear deal lifting a decades-long moratorium on nuclear trade. Singh's other achievements included accelerating India's economy and launching a social welfare program that guaranteed employment in rural areas.
But his second term was marred by corruption scandals followed by the worst-ever defeat for his Congress party in the 2014 national elections. Singh did not run again for office in those elections, which were swept by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party. He was absolved of wrongdoing in the corruption scandals.
After leaving office, Singh continued to live in Delhi with his family. He is survived by his wife, Gursharan Kaur, a historian, and their three daughters.
Chakrabarti says Singh was one of India's most graceful prime ministers. “I don't think even his worst critics will ever have anything but respect for the man,” he says.
“My life and tenure in public office are an open book,” Singh, wearing his signature light-blue Sikh turban, said in his farewell speech in 2014. “Serving this nation has been my privilege. There is nothing more that I could ask for.”
