A book by Dr. Singh's daughter Daman Singh, publicly shared anecdotes about the man and my own experience in interacting with him and his close aides suggest that Dr Singh was a pragmatist who was trusted as a professional with integrity, not as a blind loyalist.
Published Dec 30, 2024 | 9:00 AM ⚊ Updated Dec 30, 2024 | 12:29 PM
Manmohan Singh was as much a social reformer as economic liberaliser.
As a student of economics, just like former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh who died on 26 December, I would like to invoke a popular theory on the subject, David Ricardo’s theory of comparative advantage, to prove how Dr. Singh was also a significant social reformer and a strong leader but is discussed more as a soft-spoken economic reforms architect.
Some myths about Dr Singh need to be dismantled.
His democratic credentials led to his being perceived as a weak character that he was not, and his constructive role as a team leader led to consensus-based social outcomes where his quiet pragmatism was falsely seen as a sign of compromise.
Ricardo said that a country may be good at two things but is better off exporting that in which it has a comparative advantage. For instance, India has a comparative advantage in lower-cost computer software engineers but it doesn’t mean it does not or cannot export engineering goods or textiles.
Dr Singh in the eyes of the public had a comparative advantage as someone who abolished the licence-permit-quota raj ushered in as part of the liberalisation programme launched in 1991 when he became India’s finance minister under Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao.
A lot has been said about that because the loudest chattering classes of India like to banter about what benefited them personally. His image as an economist and the timing of the reforms were such that it added ballast to Brand Manmohan as an economic liberaliser.
Propaganda over the past decade has made out Dr Singh on the one hand to be someone who was handpicked by Rao although he was not fully trusted by the Nehru-Gandhi family that lords over the Congress party and on the other, the same tongues also gossip about him as “Sonia Gandhi’s pawn” when he was prime minister of the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government that ruled India from 2004 to 2014.
Simple question: How can a man considered not close to the family in the 1980s/90s suddenly emerge as their perceived stooge in the 2020s? The answer lies in self-contradictory propaganda meant to hurt his party’s image. Dr Singh has been painted in a damned-if-he-does, damned-if-he-doesn’t situation — but in his own words, history has been kind to him because contradictions do not sustain when they are closely examined.
A book by Dr. Singh’s daughter Daman Singh, publicly shared anecdotes about the man and my own experience in interacting with him and his close aides suggest that Dr Singh was a pragmatist who was trusted as a professional with integrity, not as a blind loyalist.
He offered to resign as deputy chairman of the later-dismantled Planning Commission after then prime minister Rajiv Gandhi called the panel’s members a “bunch of jokers” for their old-fashioned ideas. He also was ready to quit as finance minister after the so-called “Harshad Mehta scam” of 1992. On both occasions, he was asked to stay on.
Some people make much of an incident in 2013 when Congress leader Rahul Gandhi tore up an ordinance passed by Singh’s UPA government that wanted to give a reprieve to convicted MPs. But they forget that the Nehru-Gandhi family scion held no significant office then. Dr Singh was under no obligation to respond to him or to resist him publicly.
I have personal memories of travelling on board with Dr. Singh to the G-20 summit in St Petersburg, Russia, in 2013. His close aides were joking then about Rahul Gandhi’s reluctance to become Congress president or something more (which he later became).
“Baraat tayyar hai. Dulha toh godey par baithe!” (The marriage procession is ready but the groom is not ready to sit on the horse) was a gently humorous line directed at the person called the Congress party’s prince-in-waiting. The atmosphere I witnessed was one of confidence and ease, not sycophancy or resistance. Simply put, Congress culture, in contrast to that of the BJP, believes in loyalty but not militaristic authoritarian obedience or discipline.
Jokes, disagreements and sidestepping of personal opinions are part of that culture. Dr Singh’s style was to simply accept dissent and disagreements as a way of democratic life and focus on the role he had and on the mandate he could deliver. But he could put his foot down when necessary.
It is pertinent to recall that in 2011, when the 2G spectrum auction scandal warmed up, DMK’s A Raja was sacked as telecom minister by Dr Singh’s government and only a month later raided by officials of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). When tolerance for a coalition partner crossed a red line, Dr Singh showed some decisive action. The CBI does not act on prominent politicians without a wink or nod from the powers that be — then or now.
Dr Singh indeed had a comparative advantage as an economic reformer but when he was the prime minister, his UPA government passed laws that were milestones in social reforms that empowered landless labourers, small farmers, tribals, poorer students and democracy in general.
The Right to Information Act, the Right to Education Act, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, the Land Acquisition Act (2013), and the National Food Security Act of 2013 (for subsidized food grains and children’s nutrition) all fall in this category. These were done by a broader UPA cabinet. Singh’s steering of these reformist initiatives show that he was a social reformer as well, though most choose to focus on his role in the 1990s as an economist.
While Dr. Singh’s UPA government was slammed for not auctioning 2G spectrum (and rightly so) it is equally true that thanks to that, cheaper spectrum led to affordable mobile phone services for a large mass of self-employed people from the poorer sections of the society.
The number of cellular phone service subscribers in India was 52 million in 2004 when Dr Singh became prime minister. It was about 940 million when he ended his 10 years in the chair in 2014 — signalling close to 20-fold growth in numbers.
While cell phones might have meant fun and games for the well-heeled, we need to look at how carpenters, electricians and other such humble service providers started using mobile phones and apps to improve their businesses, manage their time and get access to customers. The role of mobile telephony as a socially reformist, empowering service is often overlooked by economic analysts.
Manmohan Singh’s long career is proof that we need deeper research and insights on a leader, and should not fall for an odd kiss-and-tell book or propaganda movie. Consider the idea that political parties can twist facts, highlight only things that they want to show and obfuscate profound details because it does not suit their intent.
(The writer is a senior journalist and commentator who has worked for Reuters, The Economic Times, Business Standard, and Hindustan Times. He tweets on X as @madversity. Views are personal. Edited by Majnu Babu).
