Manmohan Singh (Punjabi:) (born 26 September 1932) is the 17th and current Prime Minister of India. Singh is a member of the Indian National Congress party, and became the first Sikh Prime Minister of India on May 22, 2004. He is considered one of the most influential figures in India's recent history, mainly because of the economic reforms he had initiated in 1991 when he was Finance Minister under Prime Minister Narasimha Rao.[1]
Early life
He was born on 26 September 1932, in Gah, Punjab (now in Chakwal District, Pakistan). He has an Undergraduate (1952) and a Master's degree (1954) from Panjab University, Chandigarh; an Undergraduate degree (1957) from Cambridge University (St. John's College) and a D.Phil (1962) from Oxford University (Nuffield College). In 1997, the University of Alberta presented him with an Honorary Doctor of Laws. The University of Oxford awarded him an honorary Doctor of Civil Law degree in June 2005, and in October 2006, the University of Cambridge followed with the same honour. St John's College and the University of Cambridge further honoured him by naming a PhD Scholarship after him, the Dr Manmohan Singh Scholarship.
Singh married Gursharan Kaur in 1958, and they have three daughters.
Political career
Singh, an economist by profession, worked for the International Monetary Fund in his younger days.[2] Dr. Singh is known to be an unassuming politician, enjoying a formidable, highly respected and admired image.[3] Due to his work at the UN, International Monetary Fund and other international bodies, he is highly respected around the world. He was awarded the Outstanding Parliamentarian Award in 2002. Before becoming Prime Minister, he served as the Finance Minister under Narasimha Rao. He is credited with transforming the economy in the early 1990s during the financial crisis. He served as Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha (upper house) from March 1998 to May 2004, when the Bharatiya Janata Party-led coalition government was in office.
His economic policies - which included getting rid of several socialist policies, especially the License Raj - were popular. He enjoys strong support among the middle classes of India due to his education. Singh lost the election in the Lok Sabha from South Delhi constituency in the 1999 general elections. He is thus the only Indian Prime Minister never to have been an elected member of the Lower House of Parliament. In fact he has not won a direct election. He has been a member of the Rajya Sabha from Assam since 1995. He was re-elected to the Rajya Sabha in 2001 and 2007.
Economic reforms and ascent to power
Singh served as Governor of the Reserve Bank of India from 1982 to 1985, and was hand picked as finance minister in cabinet of then Prime Minister Narasimha Rao in 1991.
Singh is widely regarded as the architect of India's original economic reform programme, which was enacted in 1991 under Rao's administration. The economic liberalization package pushed by Singh and Rao opened the nation to foreign direct investment. The liberalization was prompted by an acute balance-of-payments crisis whereby the Indian government, left without sufficient reserves to meet its obligations, had begun preparations to mortgage its gold reserves to the Bank of England in order to obtain the cash reserves needed to run the country.
Many see the 1991 liberalization as the first of a series of economic restructuring efforts throughout the 1990s and 2000s that have raised India's growth rates to amongst highest in world. Despite its liberal economic policies, Rao's government was voted out in the next general election in 1996.
Opposition and 2004 election
Singh became leader of opposition in upper house of Indian Parliament, and stayed with the Congress Party during a major split in 1999, when three senior Congress leaders objected to Sonia Gandhi's rise as Congress President. Being touted as the Congress choice for the PM's job, Gandhi had become a target of nationalists who objected to her Italian birth.
An alliance led by the Congress Party won a surprisingly high number of seats in the Parliamentary elections of 2004. The Left Front decided to support a coalition government led by the Congress Party from the outside. Sonia Gandhi was elected leader of the Congress Parliamentary Party and was expected to become the Prime Minister. In a surprise move, she declined to accept the post and instead nominated Dr. Singh. He secured the nomination for prime minister on 19 May 2004 when the then President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam officially asked him to form a government. Although most expected him to head the Finance Ministry himself, he entrusted the job to P. Chidambaram.
His appointment is notable as it comes 20 years after India witnessed significant tensions between the Indian central government and the Punjabi Sikh community. After Congress Party Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, the mother-in-law of Sonia Gandhi, ordered central government troops to storm the Golden Temple (the holiest site of Sikhism) in Amritsar, Punjab to quell a separatist movement, she was assassinated by her Sikh bodyguards. The result was a genocidal campaign against Sikhs and many innocent Sikhs lost their lives during riots promoted by the Congress Party[citation needed] immediately after the assassination.
Tenure as Prime Minister
Singh's image is generally regarded as intellectual, honest but cautious, attentive to working class people (on whose votes he was elected), and technocratic. Although legislative achievements have been few and the Congress-led alliance is routinely hampered by conflicts, Singh's administration has focused on reducing the fiscal deficit, providing debt-relief to poor farmers, extending social programs and advancing the pro-industry economic and tax policies that have launched the country on a major economic expansion course since 2002. Singh has been the image of the Congress campaign to defuse religious tensions and conflicts and bolster political support from minorities like Muslims, Christians and Sikhs.
The Prime Minister's foreign policy has been to continue the new peace process with Pakistan initiated by his predecessor, Atal Bihari Vajpayee. Exchange visits by top leaders from both countries have highlighted this year, as has reduced terrorism and increased prosperity in the state of Kashmir.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is the first Indian Prime Minister who delivered a speech to the Joint session of the United States Congress.
His government has endeavored to build stronger relations with the United States, the People's Republic of China and European nations. The Government suffered a setback when it lost the support of a key ally, several African Union members, for its bid for a permanent membership to the U.N. Security Council with veto privileges[citation needed]. One of the biggest achievements[citation needed] of Manmohan Singh's Government has been a nuclear deal between India and the U.S.A. Under Dr. Singh, an economist and Finance minister P. Chidambaram, India's economic growth has continued, with the GDP growing at a very fast rate of 9%. This has resulted in India becoming a trillion dollar economy.
Legislation
The important NREGA act and the RTI act were passed by the Parliament in 2005 during his tenure. While the effectiveness of the NREGA has been debated, the RTI act has proved crucial in India's fight against corruption.
Criticism
Manmohan Singh on his visit to Arunachal Pradesh
- Manmohan Singh is often criticized by opposition parties (mainly BJP) by portraying him as the "weakest Prime Minister until now". The comment was made by Lal Krishna Advani after Manmohan Singh made a statement in which he implied that the "nuclear deal is not a big issue". [4] [5]
- Communist Parties (notably Somnath Chatterjee) have been criticising him since he got elected as Rajya Sabha member in 1991 from Assam. Their main argument was he is not eligible of becoming a Member of Parliament from a state where he does not reside.
- His statement about losing sleep on Hanif's arrest in Australia was also criticised a lot.[6]. Opposition asked whether he lost sleep when hundreds of people got killed in Hyderabad, Varanasi and Ajmer blasts.
- He is also the target of opposition due to the "Muslim appeasement" which the government is doing according to other political parties.[7]
His statements like "Minorities, particularly the Muslims, have first right over the national resources" have also invited a lot of discussion in Indian print media [8] [9]
Quotations
- "We will have to devise innovative plans to ensure that minorities, particularly the Muslim minority, are empowered to share equitably in the fruits of development. They must have the first claim on resources"
- "I could not sleep thinking about Hanif"
- "Rahul Gandhi is the future of you people" (While addressing a rally in Uttar Pradesh assembly elections).
- "India happens to be a rich country inhabited by very poor people."
- "Life is never free of contradictions"
- "Together with international unity and resolve we can meet the challenge of this global scourge and work to bring about an international law of zero tolerance for terrorism."
- "We are a coalition government, and that limits our options in some ways. Privatization happens to be one such area."
- "We need bipolar democracy like United States. Multiparty system has its own disadvantages."
- "In this increasingly interdependent world in which we live in we have an obligation to explore areas of convergence."
- "By appointing me as Prime Minister of India, Soniyaji (Sonia Gandhi) has proved her sacrifice. I will continue to work on her footsteps."
- "Jawaharlal Nehru wanted India to develop close ties with Japan and learn from its experience."[10]
- "As the largest and most developed democracies of Asia (India and Japan), we have a mutual stake in each other's progress and prosperity." [10]
Dr. Manmohan Singh's career
- First Class Honours degree in Economics, University of Cambridge, St John's College, Cambridge (1957)
- Panjab University, Chandigarh, India
- Senior Lecturer, Economics (1957-1959)
- Professor of International Trade (1969-1971)
- Reader (1959-1963)
- Professor (1963-1965)
- D. Phil in Economics, Nuffield College at University of Oxford, (1962)
- Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi
- Honorary Professor (1996)
- Chief, Financing for Trade Section, UNCTAD, United Nations Secretariat, New York
- 1966 : Economic Affairs Officer 1966
- Economic Advisor, Ministry of Foreign Trade, India (1971-1972)
- Chief Economic Advisor, Ministry of Finance, India, (1972-1976)
- Honorary Professor, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi (1976)
- Director, Reserve Bank of India (1976-1980)
- Director, Industrial Development Bank of India (1976-1980)
- Secretary, Ministry of Finance (Department of Economic Affairs), Government of India, (1977-1980)
- Governor, Reserve Bank of India (1982-1985)
- Deputy Chairman, Planning Commission of India, (1985-1987)
- Advisor to Prime Minister of India on Economic Affairs (1990-1991)
- Finance Minister of India, (21 June 1991 - 15 May 1996)
- Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha (1998-2004)
- Prime Minister of India (22 May 2004 - Present)
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