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Opinion Manmohan Singh: A man who could agree to disagree

An economist of vast repute, a patient policymaker, a statesman of remarkable intellect, and above all, a man of stirring humility, his long-lasting contributions to India’s economic transformation and global harmony will find renewed utterance in an increasingly polarised, protectionist and divided world.

Dr. Manmohan Singh at Patkar Hall.Dr. Manmohan Singh at Patkar Hall. (Express Archive)
December 28, 2024 07:21 PM IST First published on: Dec 28, 2024 at 07:19 PM IST

Ten years after completing his second five-year term as prime minister in 2014, Dr Manmohan Singh leaves behind a legacy that is perhaps quite different from what it was perceived. Many had suspected that history would be gentler and kinder to Singh than just being considered “an accidental Prime Minister”. In the last ten years, India has changed enormously. The outpouring of celebratory messages on Singh’s death is possibly not the best time to gather evidence of his legacy, but I feel President Obama’s statement about him made in 2010 following the Toronto G20 Summit- “when the prime minister speaks, people listen”- will hold sway. An economist of vast repute, a patient policymaker, a statesman of remarkable intellect, and above all, a man of stirring humility, his long-lasting contributions to India’s economic transformation and global harmony will find renewed utterance in an increasingly polarised, protectionist and divided world.

Having studied at Oxford and Cambridge and worked in Geneva, Singh remained unto his last, a son of the soil. He was deeply connected with his roots. It was evident in the policies he recommended and the speeches he made. All Indian students of economics, especially those specialising in international trade, had read or at least knew of his contributions to the field even before the 1991 reforms he helped put in place. I was one of them. He had argued, in his PhD thesis, that developing economies like India could gain if trade policy integrated more profoundly with the global economy. He suggested that export promotion could be a key driver of industrial growth, employment, and foreign exchange earnings. He even recommended devaluing the rupee to make exports more competitive in international markets. It was, therefore, a masterstroke by the then PM Narasimha Rao to appoint him as finance minister in 1991, when India was grappling with possibly its worst economic crisis since independence. It was a move that changed India’s economic story forever and for the better.

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Arguably, the defining moment of his life as an economist occurred in 1991 when he unveiled that ‘dream budget’ in the Indian Parliament, which formed the basis for dismantling the licence-permit raj, reducing import tariffs, devaluing the rupee, and opening up to private and foreign investment. His iconic 1991 budget speech included a couplet of the renowned poet Allama Iqbal:

“Yunan-o-Misr-o-Rom sab mit gaye jahaan se;

Ab tak magar hai baaqi, naam-o-nishaan hamara.”

In other words, Greece, Egypt, and Rome have all disappeared, but the Indian civilisation endures. This poetic reference was used to highlight the enduring strength and continuity of India’s cultural and civilisational heritage, to which Singh remained embedded throughout.

I met Dr Singh on many occasions, especially after I joined the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER). The last time was in February 2021 at the launch of Montek Singh Ahluwalia’s book “Backstage: The Story Behind India’s High Growth Years”. He spoke his heart out on India’s economy, extempore, I might add, to an audience that listened with rapt attention. His erudition, scholarship, wisdom and humility were all on display at the event.

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I gained insights into Singh’s personality much more closely through my association with my boss for almost nine years at ICRIER, the late Isher Ahluwalia. She always referred to him as Dr. Singh, which, rather than being a formal salutation, was to me visibly a combination of reverence and affection. And even among those who hardly knew him, he spawned such winning emotions. At the height of the Indo-Pak conflict, he felt strongly that trade and people-to-people diplomacy could coexist in some measure as a tool rather than as a byproduct of peace.

Isher, along with Singh’s PhD advisor, Ian Malcolm David Little, edited a book, “India’s Economic Reforms and Development: Essays for Manmohan Singh”, the second edition of which was released in Vigyan Bhavan in 2012. The book’s contributors include the who’s who of global economic scholarship: Jagdish Bhagwati, Meghnad Desai, Vijay Joshi, Deepak Lal, Amartya Sen, and T. N. Srinivasan. That is a formidable list of authors for a formidable economist who was able to unite people even if they intellectually differed with him or among themselves. There are no accounts of him ever being disagreeable. At the event, former RBI governors Raghuram Rajan and Duvvuri Subbarao spoke captivatingly of his contributions to India’s growth and development.

As the news of Singh’s death broke on the evening of December 26, two days after the birth centenary of Mohammad Rafi, the greatest Indian playback singer ever and perhaps for all times to come, a profound emotion took hold of me. I am not sure whether he knew Rafi sahab, but one similarity between them struck me instantly. Their consummate humility. To hundreds of millions of Rafi sahab’s fans across the world, including me, if I might add, he is as deserving of the Bharat Ratna as any artist who has walked the aisle in Rastrapathi Bhawan to be bestowed that honour. To that list and clamour, we can add another name, that of Dr Singh, recipient of the Padma Vibhushan in 1987 and now deserving of a Bharat Ratna.

Lest I am misunderstood, it is not just humility that makes Singh and Rafi Sahab deserving. Along with achieving rare and universally acknowledged landmarks in their respective fields, humility is an uncommon trait to be coveted and diffused in today’s alienated world. When people with such rare traits pass away, their loss is deeply felt, so much so that one could instantly invoke the mesmerising rendering of that immortal song by Rafi Sahab, ‘abhi na jao chhod kar, ke dil abhi bhara nahi’.

Kathuria is dean, School of Humanities and Social Sciences and professor of Economics at Shiv Nadar University

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