Soft-spoken and mild-mannered economist-turned-politician Manmohan Singh is the Prime Minister of India. He was elevated to this post when Sonia Gandhi declined the coveted post and nominated Manmohan Singh for it.
He shot into prominence after he steered the economy from the pits of a severe balance of payments crisis and saved the country from the verge of defaulting its external payments in 1991.
Known as ‘Mr Clean’ and a gentleman politician, the Oxford-Cambridge educated architect of the country’s economic reforms changed the face of India in the global comity of nations during the five years he held the post of Finance Minister from 1991-96.
Born in Gah (West Punjab), now in Pakistan, on September 26, 1932, Singh, as Finance Minister in the Narasimha Rao’s Congress government had changed the fundamental way the corporate India thinks and with it the life of millions of middle-class Indians by liberalising the economy.
An unassuming personality, Singh has held several positions, including chief economic advisor and finance secretary before becoming governor of Reserve Bank and then deputy chairman of planning Commission and UGC chairman in 1980s and early nineties.
Singh, who unshackled the country from the bureaucratic controls and licence-permit raj, had taken the economy from the brink of bankruptcy to a high growth path of 6-7 per cent during his five years stint at North block.
Singh, who is universally well regarded, was educated at Punjab University first and then in Oxford and Cambridge. His potential was evident when he won Cambridge’s prestigious Adam Smith Prize in 1956.
The following year, he returned to India as a university lecturer and for the next nine years remained at Punjab University before being posted for international duty with UNCTAD (1966-69).
He then joined the Delhi School of Economics as a professor. Two years later, his academic career was cut short and he joined the government to serve in various capacities.
In all these positions, those who worked with him have nothing but admiration for Singh’s talent and conduct. Hard-working, meticulous, charming and ‘such a nice man’, they all said about Singh.
Despite being ‘unfailingly polite’, Singh is known for his hard and bold economic decisions.
He is married to Gursharan Kaur and has three daughters.
