With grace that has been starkly missing in public life in recent years, there has been an outpouring of grief and remembrance at Manmohan Singh’s death. It is the rarest of politicians that manage to make the final exit as the ‘good guy’ after five decades in public life. This immediately brings to mind George Orwell’s famous quote about Mahatma Gandhi: “Regarded simply as a politician, and compared with other leading political figures, how clean a smell he managed to leave behind!”
MMS, of course, was always an unlikely politician – imbued with honesty, humility, decency and academic brilliance. There are distinct ways people remember him. The first was as the technocrat-politician who became the torchbearer for economic reforms in 1991, opening up India to the world, and transforming how Indians lived, worked and consumed.
He later got handed the top job in the country for a decade that represented, sequentially, the best and worst of times. As somebody with no political base, his second term as prime minister did not end in a pleasant manner, with Singh being talked about as an ineffectual leader with limited authority, a better No. 2, and even an accidental one.
Given that collective memories are vaporising at the speed of an Instagram reel, how does one then appraise Singh’s role in our polity and economy?
What fogs our reading is that 2004-2014 looks rosier in hindsight, akin to a gentler India, given what we have seen in the past decade or so. The flood of warmth about Singh flooding our WhatsApps tells you how much we have lost in engagement as a society.
Singh in some ways reminds us about the values of India’s post-Independence generation which grew up on idealism in an age of scarcity. It is also the Indian middle class and elite salute to the architect of economic reforms that have changed their lives (and fortunes) forever. In that sense, history is already remembering Singh with kinder eyes – a partial redemption.
What fogs our reading is that 2004-2014 looks rosier in hindsight, akin to a gentler India, given what we have seen in the past decade or so. The flood of warmth about Singh flooding our WhatsApps tells you how much we have lost in engagement as a society.
MMS must be smiling wherever he is: above all, he was a pragmatist and knew eventually the tide would turn. From the time he became an economic advisor in the commerce ministry in 1971 to becoming the governor of the Reserve Bank, he learnt how to work within the system, strike at the right time and get things done. If this meant waiting it out on occasion, or making sacrifices for a larger good, so be it.
While his economic views were pro-market (his doctoral thesis argued for an export-led growth model for India), he worked within socialist India for decades. One could sense that he felt it was for the welfare of the people. Put another way, he also learnt early on to follow political orders.
Mr Reform
Most importantly, Singh had the knack of being the right man at the right place. It was clear since the early 1980s that a new economic rhythm had begun announcing itself. It took a balance of payments crisis to set things in motion. He managed to draw on and lead talented people who made the initial burst of reforms – devaluation, lifting of import and industrial controls – happen, along with astute political support from PV Narasimha Rao.
Singh himself played the game in pushing through reforms in a country that is resistant to abrupt change. In March 1992, intelligence reports indicated that stock market rigging was being done by broker Harshad Mehta. Singh called for an emergency meeting with top officials, but demurred when it was suggested that Mehta be investigated. “Then there will be a lot of noise,” he said. “People will write about it, everyone will know.”
When the scandal broke a month later, Singh offered to resign – a tactic he would use often in his career – and later said the scandal began during the tenure of his predecessor Yashwant Sinha. In any case, economic reforms fizzled out the next year after electoral reversals spooked the Congress. Barring some reforms in financial services, the baton was passed on to successor governments.
“Was Singh better at playing defence than at taking the offensive on policy reform? Perhaps,” wrote economic journalist TN Ninan in 2014. “More often than not, he was willing to play along with whatever idea had political legs.”
Singh chose his battles carefully. Politically troublesome issues – disinvestment, foreign investment in insurance and retail – were left to make its way through the system.
This realpolitik was put to the test in 1999, the first and last time Singh stood for elections to the Lok Sabha, from South Delhi. While campaigning, he blamed the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh for the Sikh riots. Singh lost the election in a constituency with middle class and elite voters – people who benefited the most from economic reforms. Later, in 2005, he apologised in Parliament after the Nanavati report on the 1984 riots was tabled.
The UPA years
By this time, he was prime minister, thanks to UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi deciding to not take the top job. Thus began a unique power sharing arrangement that worked well – until it didn’t.
Buoyed by a global commodity boom, between 2004 and 2009, during MMS’s first term as prime minister, the Indian economy grew at its highest level ever of over eight percent. The India story was the talk of the world and Singh the toast of global leadership.
Lifted by finance and a construction boom, animal spirits were unleashed. India today is a lower-middle income country with an average annual income of $2,500, up from $300 in 1991. This built up an elite and middle class constituency that is around 100 million strong. While millions moved out of poverty, India still has a long way to go to join the ranks of the middle income countries, leave alone the developed world.
However, cracks were already showing after the “India shining” election that led to the BJP’s loss. Apart from the boom in IT and finance, adequate manufacturing jobs were not being generated. Inexpensive imports hurt local manufacturing, which was largely small scale. Even though Singh was not overseeing finance, his inability to help push a manufacturing-led export strategy increased India’s job-creation challenge. Low-end labour settled for jobs in the construction and service industry. Social tensions continued to simmer.
Singh was a globalist. He believed in the power of trade to lift all boats. “We need to get over old habits of thinking. Success will come to those who accept the logic of competition in a harsh competitive world…The world pays a lot of lip-service to the poor, but ultimately respects those who are strong,” Singh told this reporter during a state visit to Malaysia in 2005. Indian industry had in the early 1990s argued against the deleterious impact of unfettered global competition. Now, a much stronger corporate India started looking global.
This is around the time the UPA-I started introducing a series of reforms – Right to Information, Right to Education, Rural Employment Guarantee, Right to Food and the Forest Rights Act – driven by ideas from the National Advisory Council advising his government. Singh embraced the change. This new welfare architecture helped UPA come to power in 2009, and has now become de rigueur across Indian politics. At his peak, Singh also pushed through the Indo-US nuclear deal in 2008 that gave him some political heft.
Downhill
If Singh is to take credit for ushering in economic reforms, its fallout must bother us all. Despite all the talk of trickle-down economics, growing inequality in India has been one of the big failures of reforms. The absence of adequate investments in human capital, education and health, over the past three decades have also put a question mark over the much vaunted demographic dividend. Fuelled by easy finance, big business grew larger and larger, leading to the oligarchy capture that we are witnessing at the moment.
Soon after that famous 2009 electoral victory, it all started going downhill during UPA-II. A series of scams – 2G, Coalgate, Adarsh Housing Society, Commonwealth and more – hit the government hard. In the case of coal, it was worse. The ministry came directly under Singh. Mealy-mouthed explanations from the Prime Minister’s Office only seemed to confirm that all was not well.
Despite all the talk of trickle-down economics, growing inequality in India has been one of the big failures of reforms. The absence of adequate investments in human capital, education and health, over the past three decades have also put a question mark over the much vaunted demographic dividend. Fuelled by easy finance, big business grew larger and larger, leading to the oligarchy capture that we are witnessing at the moment.
The release of the Radia tapes (taped conversation of lobbyist Niira Radia) in 2010 that featured politicians, industrialists, lobbyists and journalists perpetuated the sense that something was morally wrong with the UPA government.
To make matters worse, a crisis of confidence in the markets during 2013 led to high inflation, inhibited investments and stifled growth. Even though P Chidambaram was back as finance minister, the damage had been done during the Pranab Mukherjee years (2009-12). This led to policy paralysis and cut the sheen of Manmohan as an economic hero for the middle class. He was suddenly just like other politicians in the public perception.
The charitable explanation is that it is the Congress leaders Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi as well as the Congress party that failed to manage the UPA coalition. Singh has never publicly opened up why he failed to act.
Hurt by the diminution of his legacy, he disappeared into a shell of silence. This only made matters worse in an age of social media-driven narratives.The man who once negotiated to pledge India’s gold was now negotiating with a yoga guru to stop a fast.
Finally, Manmohan was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
An upset urban middle class voted with their feet, leading to a comprehensive victory for the BJP. Now, a decade and two elections later, India is well on its way to becoming a different country.
The voices of redemption are, in effect, a thank you for Singh’s years in public service, a recognition that his economic value system meant something in this age of distortion – and a lament for what could have been.
Sunit Arora is an editor, writer and media consultant based in Delhi. Previously, he has been Editor, Special Assignments, Mint; Managing Editor, Outlook magazine and outlookindia.com; Business Editor, Indian Express; Business Editor, Times of India. Find him on X at @sunitarora.
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