Manmohan Singh, former Indian prime minister and architect of economic reform, has died at the age of 92.
Manmohan Singh is considered the architect of major liberalization reforms in India.
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Former Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has died at the age of 92.
Singh was one of India's longest-serving prime ministers and was considered the architect of major liberalization reforms, serving as prime minister from 2004 to 2014 and previously as finance minister.
He had been admitted to a hospital in the capital Delhi after his health deteriorated, according to reports.
Among those paying tribute to Singh on Thursday was Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who wrote on social media that "India mourns the loss of one of its most distinguished leaders."
Modi said Singh's "wisdom and humility were always evident" during their interactions and that he had "made extraordinary efforts to improve the lives of people" during his tenure as prime minister. Priyanka Gandhi, daughter of former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi and a member of the Congress party, said Singh was "truly egalitarian, wise, determined and courageous to the end".
His brother Rahul, who leads the Congress, said he had "lost a mentor and a guide".
Singh was the first Indian leader since Jawaharlal Nehru to be re-elected after a full term and the first Sikh to hold the country's highest office. He publicly apologized in Parliament for the 1984 riots in which about 3,000 Sikhs were killed.
But his second term was marred by a series of corruption allegations that have rocked his administration. The scandals, many believe, were partly responsible for his Congress party's defeat in the 2014 general election.
Singh was born on September 26, 1932, in a desolate village in India's undivided Punjab province, which lacked running water and electricity.
After attending Punjab University, he received a master's degree from the University of Cambridge and then a doctorate from Oxford.
While studying at Cambridge, Singh was troubled by a lack of funds, his daughter, Daman Singh, wrote in a book about her parents.
Getty Images Manmohan SinghGetty Images
Singh was often called the "accidental prime minister"
"His tuition and living expenses were about £600 a year. The scholarship from Panjab University allowed him to earn about £160. For the rest, he had to rely on his father. Manmohan was careful to live very frugally. The subsidised meals in the dining hall were relatively cheap, at two shillings and six pence. »
Daman Singh remembers his father as a man "who was completely helpless at home and couldn't boil an egg or turn on the television".
A consensus builder
Singh became a prominent political player when he became India's finance minister in 1991, taking over as the country sank into bankruptcy. His surprise appointment capped a long and distinguished career as an academic and civil servant: he served as an economic adviser to the government and became governor of India's central bank.
In his first speech as finance minister, he quoted Victor Hugo, saying that "no power on Earth can stop an idea whose time has come."
This served as the launching pad for an ambitious and unprecedented program of economic reforms: it cut taxes, devalued the rupee, privatized state-owned enterprises and encouraged foreign investment.
The economy recovered, industry rebounded, inflation was controlled, and growth rates remained high throughout the 1990s.
"A prime minister by chance"
Manmohan Singh was a man aware of his lack of political base. "It's good to be a statesman, but to be a statesman in a democracy, you have to win an election first," he once said.
When he tried to run for election to India's lower house in 1999, he was defeated. He served in the upper house, elected by his party, the Congress.
The same thing happened in 2004, when Singh was appointed prime minister after Congress president Sonia Gandhi declined the post — ostensibly to protect the party from damaging attacks on his Italian origins. Critics, however, have said that Sonia Gandhi was the real source of power when he was prime minister and that he was never really in office.
Mr Singh, his critics say, has always played second fiddle to Sonia Gandhi.
The greatest triumph of his first five-year term was to lift India out of its nuclear isolation by signing a historic deal that guaranteed access to American nuclear technology.
But the deal came at a price: the government's communist allies withdrew their support after protesting against it, and the Congress had to make up for lost time by securing the support of another party, accused of vote-buying.
A consensus builder, Singh presided over a coalition of sometimes difficult, confident and potentially unruly regional allies and supporters.
Although he won respect for his integrity and intelligence, he also had a reputation for being soft-spoken and indecisive. Some critics said the pace of reforms has slowed and he has failed to regain the momentum he had when he was finance minister. AFP George W Bush and Manmohan Singh, March 2006 AFP
Singh's greatest triumph during his first five-year term was lifting India out of its nuclear isolation by signing a landmark deal with the United States.
When Singh led the Congress to a second landslide election victory in 2009, he promised that the party would "raise the bar".
But the shine soon began to fade, and his second term made headlines for mostly the wrong reasons: several scandals involving his ministers that are said to have cost the country billions of dollars, a parliament paralyzed by the opposition and a major political paralysis that led to a serious economic crisis.
LK Advani, a former leader of the rival BJP party, called Singh "India's weakest prime minister".
Manmohan Singh defended his record, saying his government had worked with "utmost dedication and commitment to the country and the welfare of its people."
A pragmatic foreign policy
Singh adopted the pragmatic foreign policy followed by his two predecessors. He continued the peace process with Pakistan, although it was hampered by attacks blamed on Pakistani militants, culminating in the Mumbai attacks and shootings in November 2008.
He attempted to end the border conflict with China, concluding an agreement to reopen the Nathu La Pass in Tibet, which had been closed for more than 40 years.
Singh with his daughter Upinder Singh (right) and wife Gursharan Kaur (left)
Singh increased financial support to Afghanistan and became the first Indian leader to visit the country in nearly 30 years.
He also angered many opposition politicians who appeared to be cutting ties with India's old ally, Iran.
A cautious leader
A former academic and scholarly bureaucrat, he was known for being reclusive and always reserved. His social media account was known mostly for his boring posts and had a limited number of followers.
A man of few words, his quiet demeanor nevertheless won him many admirers. Responding to questions about a coal scandal involving the illegal allocation of billions of dollars in licenses, he defended his silence on the matter by saying it was "better than thousands of answers".
AFP An India Anti-Corruption (IAC) activist holds up a picture of Manmohan Singh before marching towards the prime minister's residence in Delhi on August 26, 2012. AFP Singh's opponents have accused him of involvement in a 2012 coal scandal. In 2015, he was summoned to court to answer charges of criminal conspiracy, breach of trust and corruption. A distraught Singh told reporters that he was "open to legal scrutiny" and "the truth will prevail". After his tenure as prime minister, Singh remained deeply involved in day-to-day affairs as a senior leader of the main opposition party, the Congress, despite his advanced age. In August 2020, he told the BBC in a rare interview that India needed to take three steps "immediately" to stem the economic damage from the coronavirus pandemic, which had plunged the country's economy into recession. The government should provide direct financial assistance to the population, make capital available for businesses and take over the financial sector, he said. History will remember Singh for bringing India out of economic and nuclear isolation, although some historians may suggest that he should have retired earlier. "I honestly believe that history will be kinder to me than the contemporary media, or for that matter, the opposition parties in Parliament," he told a reporter in 2014. Singh is survived by his wife and three daughters.
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