• Manmohan Singh, former Prime Minister and one of India’s finest economists, passed away in New Delhi on December 26. He was 92.

• A seven-day state mourning will be observed throughout the country as a mark of respect to the former PM. During this period, the national flag will be flown at half-mast across India. There will be no official entertainment during the period of state mourning.

• The Congress leader steered the country for 10 years from 2004-2014 and helped set up the country’s economic framework as Finance Minister before that.

The architect of India’s economic reforms

• Manmohan Singh, who was the Finance Minister under the then Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao, was the architect and the brainchild of economic reforms in 1991 that pulled India from the brink of bankruptcy and ushered in an era of economic liberalisation that is widely believed to have changed the course of India's economic trajectory.

• In January 1991, India struggled to finance its essential imports, especially of oil and fertilisers, and to repay official debt.

• In July 1991, the RBI pledged 46.91 tonnes of gold with the Bank of England and the Bank of Japan to raise $400 million.

• When Singh took the reins of the Finance Ministry in 1991, India’s fiscal deficit was close to 8.5 per cent of the GDP, the balance of payments deficit was huge and the current account deficit was close to 3.5 per cent of GDP.

• To make things worse, foreign reserves were just enough to pay for two weeks of imports, indicating that the Indian economy was in a deep crisis.

• Against this backdrop, the new economic era was brought in through the Union Budget 1991-92 presented by Singh.

• It was a turning point in the economic history of independent India which witnessed bold economic reforms, abolition of Licence Raj and opening of many sectors to private players and foreign players so that capital could flow in.

• Singh had to literally face a trial-by-fire to ensure widespread acceptance of his path-breaking 1991 Union Budget.

• Singh did it with great elan, from facing journalists at a post-budget press conference on July 25, 1991 to irate Congress leaders unable to digest the wide-ranging reforms at the parliamentary party meeting.

• Singh’s historic reforms not only rescued India from near bankruptcy but also redefined its trajectory as a rising global power.

• A former RBI Governor, he is credited with allowing Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), rupee devaluation, moderation in taxes, and privatisation of public sector companies.

A 33-year parliamentary innings as a Rajya Sabha member

• Born to Gurmukh Singh and Amrit Kaur on September 26, 1932, in village Gah in the Punjab province of undivided India (now Pakistan), Singh completed his matriculation examinations from the Panjab University in 1948.

• His academic career took him from Punjab to the University of Cambridge, UK, where he earned a First Class Honours degree in Economics in 1957. Singh followed this with a D.Phil in Economics from Nuffield College at Oxford University in 1962.

• He started his career by teaching in the faculty of Panjab University and the prestigious Delhi School of Economics. He also had a brief stint at the UNCTAD Secretariat and later became secretary general of the South Commission in Geneva between 1987 and 1990.

• In 1971, Singh joined the government of India as economic adviser in the Commerce Ministry. This was soon followed by his appointment as Chief Economic Advisor in the Ministry of Finance in 1972.

• Among the many governmental positions that he occupied were secretary in the Finance ministry, deputy chairperson of the Planning Commission, Governor of the Reserve Bank of India, advisor of the Prime Minister, and chairperson of the University Grants Commission.

• His political career started as a member of the Rajya Sabha in 1991, where he was leader of the opposition between 1998 and 2004. 

• The man who famously spoke of studying under the dim light of kerosene lamps in his village without electricity and went on to become a storied academic was the copybook reluctant politician, almost stumbling into the rough and tumble of mainstream politics.

• He was the proverbial dark horse when Sonia Gandhi stepped back from taking the Prime Minister’s post, ignoring the clamour from her party, and chose him instead. And so Manmohan Singh the academic bureaucrat became the 14th Prime Minister of India in 2004.

• Described as an “accidental Prime Minister”, Singh headed the Congress-led UPA government for two terms from 2004 to 2014.

• Interestingly, he had a 33-year parliamentary innings but only as a Rajya Sabha member. He never won a Lok Sabha election and lost it once to the BJP’s V.K. Malhotra from South Delhi constituency in 1999.

• His government introduced initiatives like Right to Information (RTI), Right to Education (RTE) and Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA).

• During his first tenure as PM, the coalition began to unravel when India signed a civil nuclear deal with the US. It almost cost his government with the Left parties pulling out of the UPA coalition. However, his government survived.

• On July 22, 2008, the UPA faced its first confidence vote in the Lok Sabha after the Communist Party of India (Marxist) led Left Front withdrew support over India approaching the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) for Indo-US nuclear deal. The UPA won the confidence vote with 275 votes to the opposition’s 256, with a record thin 19-vote victory after 10 MPs abstained.

• Singh was often accused by the BJP of running a government that was marred by corruption. 

• Singh battled allegations of corruption against his government including the coal scam and the 2G telecom scam which eroded the UPA government’s hold over power and gave an opportunity for the BJP’s rise and march to victory in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.

• Sources close to him said Singh had almost made up his mind to quit as PM in September 2013 after Rahul Gandhi dubbed the Union Cabinet’s decision to bring an ordinance to allow convicted politicians to contest elections “complete nonsense” and recommended it be torn. Singh was  abroad at the time.

• During the fag end of his tenure as PM, Singh was seen defending his government’s record and said he was not a weak Prime Minister.

• “I hope history will be kinder to me than the contemporary media,” Singh said in January 2014.

• He was highly critical of demonetisation by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2016 and termed it “organised loot and legalised plunder”.

• He ended his 33-year-long parliamentary innings in the Rajya Sabha on April 3, 2024.

• Manmohan Singh was awarded the Padma Vibhushan, India’s second highest civilian award, in 1987.

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