Former Indian PM Manmohan Singh Dies, Leaves Behind a Mixed Legacy

Manmohan Singh, former PM of India, passed away on 26 Dec, at the age of 92. Born in Gah in Pakistan (West) Panjab, a turbaned Sikh, Singh completed his Economics Tripos at the University of Cambridge and D Phil from the University of Oxford. He was a professor at Indian (East) Panjab University, chief economic adviser and secretary in the Indian Ministry of Finance, Governor of the Reserve Bank of India, Deputy Chairman of the Indian Planning Commission and Chairman of the University Grants Commission. In 1991, when India faced a Balance of Payments crisis, he was appointed the Finance Minister (FM) of India. As FM his greatest contribution was in liberalizing the Indian economy from the earlier ‘licence-permit-regime’ which was deeply corrupt and nepotistic. Driven by foreign funding into industrial development, open markets, he unleashed a new Indian middle class. In 2004, when INC chief Sonia Gandhi refused the PM position, she pushed Singh’s name as the PM. He was at the helm for two terms which saw major reforms through Bills on Rights to Education, Information, Food Security, Aadhar (Universal Identification), compulsory 100 days a year of work and wages to the poor, and the Indo-US nuclear deal. However, he fell shy of reforms in agriculture—the Swaminathan Report kept languishing after completion in 2007. His second tenure as PM of the INC-led United Progressive Alliance govt. was marred with allegations of corruption by his ministers, though his own conduct was impeccably honest. As a Sikh, his drawback remained that though he apologized to Sikhs for the 1984 genocide on behalf of INC, but it was only symbolic as nothing changed. Justice demands acknowledgments, trials, convictions, reconciliations, and reparations. His own cabinet inducted two ‘criminals’ as Union Ministers (Jagdish Tytler and Kamal Nath) and one on the Parliamentary Committee (Sajjan Kumar).