Former Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh dies aged 92 | India

Manmohan Singh, India’s first Sikh prime minister and the architect of the sweeping economic reforms that set the stage for the country’s emergence as a global powerhouse, has died aged 92.

A hospital statement attributed Singh’s death to “age-related medical conditions”.

The government announced seven days of mourning along with a state funeral for Singh. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi paid tribute to him, saying: “India mourns the loss of one of its most eminent leaders.”

Dubbed India’s “reluctant prime minister” because of his shyness and preference for being behind the scenes, Singh was considered an unlikely choice to lead the world’s largest democracy. But when Congress leader Sonia Gandhi led her party to a surprise victory in 2004, she approached Singh to become prime minister.

Famous for his trademark sky blue turbans and homespun white kurta pyjamas, Singh became the country’s first non-Hindu prime minister. He served a rare full two terms as prime minister in India’s tumultuous politics and is credited with spurring rapid economic growth that lifted tens of millions of Indians out of poverty.

Born in 1932 in Gah, a village in present-day Pakistan, Singh’s early life was shaped by hardships and he walked miles to attend school.

His family was uprooted during the partition of the subcontinent after independence from Britain in 1947 and migrated to the Sikh holy city of Amritsar in India.

Singh, one of 10 siblings, was so determined to get an education that he would study at night under street lights to escape the noise of his shared family home. His brother, Surjit Singh, recalled that his father “used to say that Manmohan would be the Prime Minister of India” because he “always had his nose in a book”.

His diligence paid off when he won scholarships to study economics at Cambridge and later at Oxford, where he earned a doctorate.

He went on to hold key government roles, including serving as the head of the Reserve Bank of India. Later he worked for the International Monetary Fund.

Singh was thrown into politics in 1991 when India, facing one of its worst economic crises ever, was on the brink of default. The then Prime Minister, PV Narasimha Rao, appointed Singh to be his Finance Minister.

In a seismic shift, Singh broke away from India’s Soviet-style economic planning model. He quoted Victor Hugo – “No power on earth can stop an idea whose time has come” – before adding that “the emergence of India as a great economic power in the world happens to be such an idea”.

He dismantled the restrictive “license raj” which dictated the products factories could make and the types of bread that could be sold, devalued the rupee to boost exports, opened key industrial sectors to private and foreign investment, and lowered taxes. The bold moves ushered in rapid growth, earning Singh the name India’s economic “liberator”.

The same deft economic hand marked his first term as prime minister. He presided over an economy that grew at more than 8%, championed landmark initiatives such as the Indo-US civil nuclear deal that ended India’s nuclear isolation, and launched ambitious social welfare programs. But his second term was marred by a series of massive corruption scandals that eroded public confidence in his administration.

These scandals led to accusations that Singh, despite being personally incorruptible, lacked the authority to control his coalition partners. His former adviser Sanjaya Baru wrote a scathing memoir and said it appeared that Singh “would uphold the highest standards of honesty in public life but would not impose this on others”. Singh’s apparent respect for Sonia Gandhi led to allegations that he was her “puppet”.

Singh, who is survived by his wife Gursharan Kaur and three daughters, famously described politics as “the art of the possible” and said towards the end of his second term as prime minister that “history will be kinder to me than the media”.