Manmohan Singh breathed his last on December 26 at Delhi’s All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), marking the end of an extraordinary and exhaustive stint in public life that shaped India’s journey as a modern liberalised democracy. A technocrat who graduated from the lofty circles of academia to the sequestered realms of policy-planning and the grubby world of politics, Manmohan Singh’s long and illustrious career stands unparalleled in its impact on public policy-making in India.

India will remember its 14^th Prime Minister for his incorruptibility and an unwavering commitment to the ideas and ideals he held dear. It was a quality that set him apart from his peers; a politician who was somehow above the murky milieu of politics. While he may not have been popularly elected as Prime Minister in 2004, his leadership won the trust of even those disillusioned with politics, culminating in the Congress securing a larger majority in the 2009 general elections. His honesty, academic brilliance, decency, and politeness made him a respected figure, particularly among the urban middle class.

But his gentle demeanour concealed a steely resolve and pragmatism, which was evident during the 25 years from the 1970s to 1991, as he worked with leaders as diverse as Indira Gandhi, Morarji Desai, and Rajiv Gandhi in various capacities as a key architect of India’s economic policies. Despite being one of Indira Gandhi’s key advisers during the Emergency, Morarji Desai appointed him as Secretary in the Department of Economic Affairs under the Finance Ministry after the Congress’s defeat in the general elections.

Despite shunting out several officers, Desai retained Singh, even though he had entered the bureaucracy laterally as a technocrat. Reflecting on the Emergency, Singh shared his thoughts with his daughter, Daman Singh, who later quoted him in her book Strictly Personal: Manmohan and Gursharan. He remarked, “I think there was a lot more emphasis on punctuality, on discipline. So some good things happened. But I think the atmosphere in the whole country was one of fear. There were arbitrary arrests and detentions.”

Singh managed to navigate those turbulent years due to his competence and a remarkable ability to disengage when necessary – an attribute he demonstrated throughout his career, including his tenure as prime minister. He once threatened to quit as an adviser in the commerce ministry during Indira Gandhi’s tenure when he refused to endorse a proposal by Commerce Minister L. N. Mishra for submission to the Union Cabinet. Singh was ultimately persuaded to remain in his position after an intervention from the Prime Minister’s Office.

Again, as RBI Governor, a post to which he was appointed during Indira Gandhi’s tenure which started after the Janata Party government was defeated, Singh had differences with the Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee. The government wanted RBI to grant a licence to the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) – a foreign bank promoted by Pakistani businessman Aga Hasan Abedi – to open branches in India. Singh was opposed to the move and advised the government against it. But the government took a proposal to the Cabinet to strip the RBI of its power to license foreign banks. An upset Singh sent his letter of resignation to the Prime Minister and the Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee who would, in later years, report to Singh as Prime Minister in a reversal of roles. But here too, he was persuaded to take his resignation back.

Singh was clear who held power in this case and what the RBI Governor’s autonomy really amounted to. “The RBI Governor is not superior to the Finance Minister in authority. And if the Finance Minister insists, I don’t see that the Governor can really refuse unless he is willing to give up his job,” Singh is quoted as saying by his daughter in her book. He was, indeed, shifted out of the RBI after less than three years although Pranab Mukherjee denies having any role in it as Finance Minister. In his book ‘The Turbulent years’, Mukherjee wrote that the decision to move Singh was taken by Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi who had taken over after his mother was assassinated. “I had absolutely no role in Dr Manmohan Singh’s departure from the RBI. By December, 1985, (then) Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi was firmly in the saddle and I was out of the Cabinet and the party,” Mukherjee wrote.

Singh literally carried the threat of resignation in pocket, perhaps confident in the belief that both his alma mater Panjab University and the University of Delhi were constantly in pursuit of him as a teacher. This was the confidence with which he took over as Finance Minister in PV Narasimha Rao’s tenure, an iconic stint during which he heralded reforms and opened up India’s economy to the world. At a time when India was facing a daunting economic crisis with depleted foreign reserves and looming balance of payment issue, a crippling fiscal deficit and mounting oil prices because of the Gulf War, Singh was summoned to bring the economy back on track. He was as surprised by the selection as some of Rao’s own colleagues who did not believe Rao to be a supporter of economic reforms. “I had no inkling that Rao was in favour of liberalisation based on his past record,” Singh said.

But even here, Singh was conscious of the entire plan blowing up on his face, given the stiff opposition for the move both from the right and the left spectrum in politics. “He (Rao) also jokingly told me that if things worked well, we would all claim credit and if things didn’t work out well, I would be sacked,” Singh said.

By this time, the transition from being the technocrat/adviser to the politician was almost complete with his election to the Rajya Sabha first in 1991 and then in 1995. The Congress lost the general election in 1996. In 1999, the only time Singh considered contesting the general elections as a candidate from South Delhi, he met with resistance from the Congress cadre. Subhash Chopra, the local Congress bigwig led the group of disenchanted cadre because he himself wanted to be fielded from South Delhi from where Singh had been put up by the AICC. Left largely to his own, Singh tried to manage with his meagre resources, borrowing money from friends for election expenses.

In an anecdote famously recalled by journalist/author Khushwant Singh in his book ‘Absolute Khushwant: The Low-Down on Life’, he received a call from Singh’s son-in-law Vijay Tankha. “…the son-in-law (of Manmohan Singh), whom my family knew, came to borrow some money – just Rs two lakh – to hire taxis that were needed for campaigning. They didn’t even have that much to spare. I gave the money in cash,” Khushwant Singh recounted.

But days after the election, Manmohan Singh called him and asked for an appointment. He came for the appointment with a packet full of cash. “I haven’t used the money,” Singh told the writer who was stunned by this level of honesty and attitude to money. “When people talk of integrity, I say the best example is the man who went on to occupy the highest office in the country,” Khushwant Singh said.  

Singh lost that election but continued to be in the Rajya Sabha where he was Leader of Opposition in 2004 when the Congress, along with its allies in the Inited Progressive Alliance (UPA), defeated the BJP in general elections. And when the time came, with Sonia Gandhi refusing to take over the job for which she had been elected because of the stiff opposition she faced, Singh was her natural choice. He was a politician but not a career politician like Sharad Pawar or Pranab Mukherjee who could challenge her authority. And he had impeccable credentials to back the political approach of redistributive justice and rights-based policy framework that both the Left parties that were backing the government and Sonia Gandhi favoured.

Singh worked well with Sonia Gandhi in the first term, rolling out the historic MGNREGA, the right to education, the right to information and a massive farm-loan waiver of Rs 60,000 crore that not just steered the economy through the aftermath of the global economic meltdown but helped the Congress return to power in 2009. Although the path of reforms slowed down, largely owing to the pressure from the Left which was supporting the government, the economy grew steadily at a rate of 7.74 per cent per year.

But things started unravelling in Singh’s second tenure with his health taking a turn for the worse and Sonia Gandhi herself becoming unwell. Veteran Congressman Mani Shankar Aiyar encapsulated that period in his recent book ‘A Maverick in Politics’ and suggested that if Pranab Mukherjee had been Prime Minister instead of Manmohan Singh, the UPA II would not have unravelled in the manner it did towards the end. In 2012, instead of choosing Mukherjee as Presidential candidate, the Congress should have chosen Manmohan Singh, says Aiyar.

“This was principally because we needed a very active PM in good health and with the energy to head the government,” said Aiyar, noting that none of the political crisis or the anti-corruption movement led by Anna Hazare was handled properly because both Singh and Sonia Gandhi were not up to handling them. “I hazard the view that if this obvious step had been taken, we would have not gone into a paralysis of governance and thus opened the door to the worst excesses of Hindutva in the general elections of 2014,” said Aiyar.

Singh is blamed for not acting when he saw scams unfolding around him or a political crisis engulfing the Congress. But then, he never claimed to be a typical politician. He was a technocrat who lacked the resources to handle the murky world of politics. His detractors would say he was unsuited to be PM. But he himself held the view that History would judge him more kindly. From the outpourings of grief across political parties and from the common public, it is quite obvious that he was right about it after all.

ENDS