Dr. Manmohan Singh - The New Prime Minister of India

In the last five years, somewhere in the haze of India's rapid economic growth and the glowing corporate performance, the spotlight turned away from the one man who years ago had almost single-handedly changed the way India's economy moved. Now Dr. Singh's time has come again. And he has a rather formidable reputation to live up to.

Manmohan Singh - The Man

One of ten siblings, Manmohan Singh was born in Gah, West Punjab, (in what became Pakistan) on September 26, 1932 to Mr Gurmukh Singh and Mrs Gursharan Kaur. The family moved to Amritsar, when Manmohan was 14.

He hails from a poor farming background - his father owned a shop selling dry fruits, and the first time he ever wore a tie was for his first job interview. Manmohan Singh was so determined to get an education he would study at night under streetlights, because there were so many people in the traditional, extended family home.

Dr. Singh, who says he became an economist because he wanted to eradicate poverty, studied at Oxford and Cambridge on scholarships. He wrote his Oxford doctoral thesis on India's export competitiveness. He later taught at the Delhi School of Economics and became a civil servant where he held a string of high posts.

He holds an M.A., D.Phil. (Oxford), D.Litt.(Honoris Causa); I.N.C.(Assam).

Oft described as a quiet intellectual with oversized glasses, Singh is seen as a deeply honest man in a country where politics is deeply tainted by corruption. Manmohan Singh is one of the few Indians who is widely respected as a politician and as an economic reformer by all his peers irrespective of their politcal affiliations. He won the 'Honest Man of the Year' award in 1996 for his clean image.

Baptism By Fire

In the 1991, when Singh became the finance minister, India's economy was in a shambles. The country had an unsustainable fiscal deficit of close to 8.5 per cent of the gross domestic product -- almost double of what it is currently.

There was a huge balance of payments deficit. The current account deficit was close to 3.5 per cent of GDP and there were no foreign lenders who were willing to finance it.India had barely a billion dollars in terms of foreign exchange reserves -- roughly equal to two weeks' imports. India was on the verge of deafulting on the repayments of it's international loans.

In short the country was on the verge of bankruptcy.

The Doctor Begins The Healing Process

Manmohan Singh was the man who ushered in the reforms that liberalized India's economy, changing the fundamental way that in corporate India thinks and with it the lives of millions of middle class Indians.

He went to then PM Narasimha Rao and told him that India needed a strong vision to take it forward.Rao backed Manmohan Singh to the hilt and India embarked on a path of reforms. With the PM's support, Singh brought in changes that broke sharply with India's state-directed economics. He devalued the rupee to spur exports, loosened foreign investment rules, opened oil refining, telecommunications and the stock exchanges, slashed taxes and sought to cut through red tape ensnaring companies.

Under Singh, that year, the government of India entered into an understanding with the Reserve Bank of India to deny itself the right to 'draw' on the RBI to fund its deficit. This put paid to the unlimited monetisation of fiscal deficit, and was a historic step.

During his speech in Parliament while presenting the Budget in 1994-95, he quoted Victor Hugo: "No power on earth can stop an idea whose time has come."

The result was that productivity in the Indian industry grew like never before.

An Unassuming Gentleman

Dr Singh once told an interviewer that he was "very surprised" when he was invited to become the finance minister by PV Narasimha Rao.

After the Congress was voted out of power, Singh kept a rather low profile, though he was the leader of the opposition in the Rajya Sabha. Always a quiet, unassuming personality, out of the spotlight Singh faded into the background.

Except when his name began to be tossed around as an alternative to the position of the prime minister to those who could not accept Sonia Gandhi. Singh himself never said a word about his ambitions or aspirations and has pretty much been a loyal supporter of the Gandhi family.

Now at the helm of Indian politics as the PM, Dr. Singh will face a very different economy from what he inherited about 10 years ago. Far from being close to defaulting on its international debts, this time the economy is sizzling, having posted 10.4 per cent GDP growth last quarter. There is also a national consensus on the need for economic reforms, liberalisation and corporate-friendly policies.

While Singh has never elucidated on his vision of how to take India ahead, there cannot be any doubts that the economy will be safe in his hands.

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