The silent revolutionary

Dr Manmohan Singh became prime minister when the narrative was all about 'India Shining'. The 'India Growth Story' took shape when global investors discovered that one of the 1991 reformers had risen to become the prime minister of India. Many commentators deny Dr Singh due credit for the 1991 reforms. It hasn't helped that Dr Singh often gave more than his due share of credit to PM P V Narasimha Rao - partly out of an uncommonly self-effacing nature but also, perhaps, to garner political legitimacy for his technocratic reforms that tore down the entire policy and ideological framework of successive Congress governments since Independence. Dr Singh's speeches and writings, including his PhD thesis, a critique of Prime Minister Nehru's trade policies from the decades prior to his appointment as finance minister in 1991, show that the reforms had not simply been handed to him by the IMF or PM Rao for implementation. He was very much their architect, which explains how the reforms went much beyond the conditions imposed by the IMF for bailing out India in 1991. Congress leader Jairam Ramesh, who was the Officer on Special Duty in the PMO at that time, told me in an interview for the Everyday Economics Podcast in 2020 that PM Rao was, in fact, prepared to default on the sovereign loan repayments. However, Dr Singh persuaded him against this by explaining the severe damage defaulting would cause to India's global reputation. In pre-1991 India, Dr Singh's dissent had, on occasion, caused Prime Minister Indira

This article was originally published on February 01, 2025.