Manmohan Singh is a man who presided over the most-lauded economic reforms the country has ever seen and later became a Prime Minister who, as much as he achieved, was also faced with the ignominy of a large number of scams having taken place during his tenure. For these reasons, he is both praised as well as derided. But at the end of his tenure as prime minster, he had said in an interview, “History will be kinder to me than the contemporary media or the Opposition parties in Parliament.”
Three years down the line, his conviction stands validated, as the public realises the wisdom of the measured words spoken by the well-respected scholar. On his 85th birthday today, the hashtag #ManmohanSingh trended on Twitter, and a people reeling under the effect of demonetisation, a hastily implemented GST and rising prices showered praise on Manmohan Singh for his astute economic understanding.
What makes the man endure? Why he is as relevant today as he was in the 1990s.
Manmohan Singh: A torch-bearer of liberalisation
Heeding to the call of the progressive Prime Minister Narasimha Rao, who wanted to take the country in a new direction, the Oxford and Cambridge educated Manmohan Singh accepted the role of finance minister and went about ushering in an era of liberalisation.
Singh’s historic budget of 1991 kick-started a series of economic reforms that helped India latch on to the globalisation fast train that catapulted a slow-moving socialist economy into an age where it became the country with the fastest growth rate.
Bringing about a major change in the socialist policies established under the first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, and practised by subsequent governments, Singh opened up the economy to foreign investments and, along with Prime Minister Narasimha Rao, who created a business-friendly climate by abolishing licence raj, helped the service sectors and manufacturing grow.
Markets were thrown open for foreign investors and multi-national companies. The move prompted the then Opposition, the BJP, to lead nationwide protests against his pro-market policies.
During his tenure as the finance minister between 1991and 95, India achieved its highest ever Gross Domestic Product growth rate of 8.5 per cent.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh: Achievements and controversies alike
Singh is not only the first Sikh prime minister, he was also the only PM after Nehru to serve consecutive five-year terms.
It was under his prime-ministership that India saw a number of significant milestones. The India-US nuclear deal, which enhanced cooperation in the area of nuclear energy between the countries was hailed for being forward-looking.
During his leadership, several legislations came from the government benches in the Lok Sabha and they all stand as landmarks today. With the stewardship of UPA chairperson and Congress president Sonia Gandhi as National Advisory Committee chairperson, several new reforms in areas of transparency in government and the social responsibility of government were brought in through legislation, such as the Right to Information Act, the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, Right to Food Act, better known as the Food Security Act , the Forest Rights Act, and Right to Education Act.
The benefits of these long-term measures, however, got drowned in the number of scams that surfaced during UPA-2, during Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s second consecutive term. The Commonwealth Games scam, the Aadarsh Housing Society scam and most controversially the 2G spectrum scam sank the Congress into a deep abyss, and the reputation of the Prime Minister along with it, by the time of the general election in 2014.
Manmohan Singh was widely criticised over his silence about the many corruption cases, and the academic-PM’s otherwise squeaky-clean image took a severe beating, as Singh the politician was slammed for not standing up to wrongdoing that took place under his leadership.
Coalition compulsions were blamed for many of the lapses. The inability of someone who is less a politician, more an academic to deal with the runaway corruption indulged in by senior political leaders was, as much as it was unforgivable, all too apparent.
Three years since, a resurrection
At an interview during the end of his term as prime minister in 2014, Manmohan Singh had prophesied, “It will be disastrous for the country to have Shri Narendra Modi as prime minister.”
Subsequently, when the biggest economic decision of the Modi government, namely demonetisation, was announced, Manmohan Singh in a speech in the Rajya Sabha just two weeks after the announcement, warned that he foresaw a fall of 2 percentage points in the GDP of the then robust economy.
The sharp economist was proved right when the GDP for the first quarter of 2017-2018 had dropped to 5.7 per cent from 7.1 per cent in the corresponding quarter the previous year 2016-2017. The release of the statistics instantly renewed respect for Singh among the fickle masses who had at the start of the note ban derided him over his predictions.
Recently, the flagbearer of the Goods and Services Tax also warned about the consequences of hasty implementation of the tax regime that he himself helped pass in Parliament a few months ago, and said GST and demonetisation has struck a terrible blow on the small enterprises sector and the informal economy, which make up about 40 per cent of the Indian economy, and employs the majority of India’s workforce.
In his Rajya Sabha speech soon after the November 8, 2016 demonetisation, Manmohan Singh had said that the withdrawal of 86 per cent of the currency in circulation had led to the “organised loot and plunder of the common people”. Calling note ban a monumental failure, Singh shut down those who claimed it would have long-term benefits, by quoting 20th century’s most influential economist John Maynard Keynes: “In the long run, we are all dead.”