The former Indian Prime Minister dies at the age of 92

Former Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has died at the age of 92.

Singh was one of India’s longest-serving prime ministers, and he was regarded as the architect of key liberalizing economic reforms, as prime minister from 2004–2014 and before that as finance minister.

He had been admitted to a hospital in the capital Delhi after his health condition deteriorated, reports said.

Singh was the first Indian leader since Jawaharlal Nehru to be re-elected after serving a full first term, and the first Sikh to hold the country’s top post. He issued a public apology in Parliament for the 1984 riots in which around 3,000 Sikhs were killed.

But his second term was marred by a series of corruption allegations that dogged his administration. Many say the scandals were partly responsible for his Congress party’s crushing defeat in the 2014 general elections.

Singh was born on 26 September 1932 in a desolate village in the Punjab province of undivided India, which lacked both water and electricity.

After attending Panjab University, he did a Masters at the University of Cambridge and then a DPhil at Oxford.

While studying at Cambridge, the lack of funds bothered Singh, his daughter, Daman Singh, wrote in a book about her parents.

“His tuition and living expenses came to about £600 a year. The Panjab University scholarship gave him about £160. For the rest he had to depend on his father. Manmohan was careful to live very sparingly. Subsidized meals in the dining hall were relatively cheap to two shillings sixpence.”

Daman Singh remembered his father as “completely helpless around the house and could neither boil an egg nor turn on the television”.

Singh rose to political prominence as India’s finance minister in 1991, taking over as the country was teetering on the brink of bankruptcy.

His unexpected appointment ended a long and illustrious career as an academic and civil servant – he served as an economic adviser to the government and became a governor of the Reserve Bank of India.

In his maiden speech as finance minister, he famously quoted Victor Hugo as saying that “no power on earth can stop an idea whose time has come”.

It served as the launch pad for an ambitious and unprecedented economic reform program: he cut taxes, devalued the rupee, privatized state-run enterprises and encouraged foreign investment.

The economy revived, industry took off, inflation was controlled, and growth rates remained consistently high throughout the 1990s.

Manmohan Singh was a man very aware of his lack of a political base. “It’s nice to be a statesman, but to be a statesman in a democracy you first have to win elections,” he once said.

When he tried to win the election to the Indian House of Commons in 1999, he was defeated. He sat in the upper house instead, elected by his own Congress party.

The same thing happened in 2004, when Singh was first appointed prime minister after Congress president Sonia Gandhi turned down the post – apparently to protect the party from damaging attacks on her Italian origins. However, critics argued that Sonia Gandhi was the real source of power while he was prime minister and that he was never really in charge.

The greatest triumph of his first five-year term was to bring India out of nuclear isolation by signing a landmark agreement that ensured access to US nuclear technology.

But the deal came at a price – the government’s Communist allies withdrew support after protesting it, and the Congress had to make up lost numbers by sourcing support from another party amid accusations of vote-buying.

A consensus builder, Singh presided over a coalition of sometimes difficult, assertive and potentially unruly regional coalition allies and supporters.

Although he was respected for his integrity and intelligence, he also had a reputation for being soft-spoken and indecisive. Some critics argued that the pace of reform slowed and he failed to achieve the same momentum he had as finance minister.

When Singh guided the Congress to another decisive electoral victory in 2009, he promised that the party would “rise to the occasion”.

But the luster quickly began to wane, and his second term was mostly in the news for all the wrong reasons: several scandals involving his cabinet ministers that reportedly cost the country billions of dollars, a parliament stalled by the opposition, and an enormous political paralysis which resulted in a severe economic downturn.

LK Advani, a senior leader in the rival BJP party, called Singh India’s “weakest prime minister”.

Manmohan Singh defended his record, saying his government had worked with “utmost commitment and dedication for the country and the welfare of its people”.

Singh adopted the pragmatic foreign policy pursued by his two predecessors.

He continued the peace process with Pakistan – although this process was hampered by attacks blamed on Pakistani militants, culminating in the November 2008 Mumbai gun and bomb attack.

He tried to end the border dispute with China and brokered an agreement to reopen the Nathu La pass to Tibet, which had been closed for more than 40 years.

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 by appearing to end ties with India’s old ally, Iran.

A studious former academic and bureaucrat, he was known to be self-effacing and always kept a low profile. His social media account was mostly known for boring posts and had a limited number of followers.

A man of few words, his calm demeanor nonetheless won him many admirers.

Responding to questions about a coal scandal involving the illegal award of licenses worth billions of dollars, he defended his silence on the issue by saying it was “better than thousands of answers”.

In 2015, he was summoned to appear in court to answer charges of criminal conspiracy, breach of trust and corruption-related offences. An outraged Singh told reporters that he was “open to legal inquiry” and that “the truth will prevail”.

After his time as prime minister, Singh remained deeply engaged with the issues of the day as a senior leader of the main opposition Congress party 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 sent the country’s economy into recession.

The government needed to provide direct cash assistance to people, provide capital for businesses and fix the financial sector, he said.

History will remember Singh for bringing India out of economic and nuclear isolation, although some historians may suggest he should have stepped down earlier.

“I honestly think history will be kinder to me than the contemporary media, or for that matter the opposition parties in parliament,” he told an interviewer in 2014.

Singh is survived by his wife and three daughters.