The unexpected eruption of nostalgia and admiration for Manmohan Singh from people across the country is testimony to what he stood for. Because of his modesty and refusal to run banner headlines about his achievements, it was easy to overlook his contributions. Now, with his passing, and in hindsight, it is becoming clear how lucky India was to have had a leader like him.
He was a rare politician — a person of outstanding intellect and moral integrity, and the architect of India’s most important reforms, from 1991 to 1993. These were transformative for India. One can see this from the pick-up in India’s growth rate following the reforms, and the arrival of Indians on the global stage. Today, in the United States (US) and Europe, some of the most prominent researchers, corporate leaders and policymakers are from India. This is the result of our early investment in science and engineering, and the opening up of the economy in the early 1990s initiated by Dr Singh. I have no doubt in my mind that he will go down in history as one of not just India’s but the world’s most important leaders.
I first met him in the late 1980s. We used to live in an East Delhi housing complex. Dr Singh had finished his term as governor of the Reserve Bank of India. A friend called to ask if he could bring Dr Singh to take a look at our flat. He was looking to buy “a simple apartment” and wanted to get a sense of the homes in our locality. He came and met us and chatted with my mother, who was staying with us in Delhi at that time. He never did move to our complex because, soon thereafter, he was appointed secretary-general of the South Commission in Geneva and after that, in 1991, he became finance minister of India.
In 2004, my mother called me, full of excitement; Dr Singh, who had come to look at our flat and “talked to her so unassumingly” had just become the prime minister (PM).
Some people took his modesty and soft-spoken manner to be a sign of weakness. On the contrary, it was a sign of his deep confidence. He felt no need to shout from the rooftop. There were many instances where I saw direct evidence of this. After I joined the government in 2009, I was going to publish a book of essays I had written earlier. This included one essay which had a lot of praise for Dr Singh, written before he became prominent in politics. Since I was working in his government and this was about him, I thought it would be right to seek his permission before publishing it. I sent it to him, confident that he would say yes — after all, it was an article of praise. He called me soon and said he would request me not to publish the article, since the praise would embarrass him. I realised I was working with an unusual politician, one who gets embarrassed by praise. I called my publisher and had that essay deleted.
In addition to launching India’s economic growth, he raised India’s global standing as a democracy. He had an innate democratic instinct. In 2005, when, as PM, he visited JNU in New Delhi, Left-wing students appeared with black flags protesting against his visit. The university authorities were upset and decided to act against the protesting students. Show-cause notices were served to some, and the Delhi Police detained some of them. It was Dr Singh who intervened, arguing that “protests were students’ democratic rights”. Later, in a speech he quoted Voltaire: “Every member of a university community, if he or she wishes to aspire to be worthy of the university, must accept the truth of Voltaire’s classic statement. Voltaire proclaimed, ‘I may disagree with what you have to say, but I shall defend, to the death, your right to say it’. That idea must be the cornerstone of a liberal institution,” Dr Singh argued.
Let me close with one policy idea that boosted India’s economy. Till the year 1991, India’s foreign exchange reserve used to be very low — approximately $5 billion. Occasionally this would rise a little, causing some comfort, and occasionally it would drop, causing panic that India would not have money to buy essential imports.
Because foreign exchange was so low, India had strict rules prohibiting people from taking foreign exchange out of the country. There is, however, a simple mistake in this reasoning. If you do not allow people to take foreign exchange out of the country, they will try not to bring foreign exchange into the country, since once in, the money would be trapped.
Among the many reforms that Dr Singh initiated in 1991; an important one was the lifting of restrictions on the foreign exchange being taken out of the country. There were, of course, short-term risks associated with such a policy. In a country where people were not allowed to take money, they brought in out of the country when you first allow the money to be taken out, there would be a rush to take it all out. So, India had to go to the International Monetary Fund to stand guard when the reforms were initiated. But soon, within two or three years, what was predicted happened. Once people grew confident that they could take their money, they began to bring it in. Foreign exchange started flowing into the country like never before. The reserve of roughly $5 billion soon rose to $300 billion. And India arrived on the global stage.
Kaushik Basu is professor at Cornell, and former chief economic adviser, Government of India. He also served as chief economist, World Bank. The views expressed are personal
