Dr. Manmohan Singh was the first specialist to be sworn in India’s Prime Minister. Singh, who died at the age of 92 years on 26 December, was trained as an economist and made it his mission to take India on a growth trajectory. After all, his DPhil was from Oxford University on Indian Export Trends and Prospects, and he put it to good use when he bailed out the country from a grave economic crisis as Finance Minister in the cabinet of Prime Minister P. V. Narasimha Rao.
The economic reforms unleashed by him, changed the face of the country in unimagined ways. Euphemistically dubbed as economic reforms, the policies of economic liberalisation made the country align closer with the United States of America, leading to it slowly shedding its socialist roots in a manner not visualised earlier.
Though resented by old Congressmen, like the late Vijay Bhasker Reddy, who thought that the interests of the poor had been bartered to satisfy the demands of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank (WB) that tailored the strict conditionalities, Manmohan Singh called his programme, “reforms with a human face.”
Despite his humble countenance, Manmohan Singh displayed firm resolve when handling key issues as India’s Prime Minister.