India’s former PM Manmohan Singh dies aged 92

NEW DELHI: Manmohan Singh, the former Indian prime minister who governed the South Asian country for two terms and liberalised its economy in an earlier stint as finance minister, died at the age of 92, on Thursday.

Singh, an economist-turned-politician who also served as the governor of the central bank, was ailing and admitted to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi.

Described as a “reluctant king” in his first stint as prime minister, the quietly spoken Manmohan Singh was arguably one of India’s most successful leaders.

The first Sikh in office, Singh, 92, was being treated for age-related medical conditions and died after he was brought to hospital after a sudden loss of consciousness.

He is credited with steering India to unprecedented economic growth and lifting hundreds of millions out of dire poverty. He went on to serve a rare second term.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi said: “India mourns the loss of one of its most distinguished leaders, Dr. Manmohan Singh Ji.” He applauded the economist-turned-politician’s body of work.

Born into a poor family in a part of British-ruled India now in Pakistan, Singh studied by candlelight to win a place at Cambridge University before heading to Oxford, earning a doctorate with a thesis on the role of exports and free trade in India’s economy.

He became a respected economist, then India’s central bank governor and a government advisor but had no apparent plans for a political career when he was suddenly tapped to become finance minister in 1991.

During that tenure to 1996, Singh was the architect of reforms that saved India’s economy from a severe balance of payments crisis, and promoted deregulation and other measures that opened an insular country to the world.

Famously quoting Victor Hugo in his maiden budget speech, he said: “No power on earth can stop an idea whose time has come,” before adding: “The emergence of India as a major economic power in the world happens to be one such idea.”

Singh’s ascension to prime minister in 2004 was even more unexpected. He was asked to take on the job by Sonia Gandhi, who led the centre-left Congress party to a surprise victory.
Italian by birth, she feared her ancestry would be used by Hindu nationalist opponents to attack the government if she were to lead the country.