TN Nainan
I met Manmohan Singh for the first time in 1981. Then I was a reporter of the ‘Business Standard’ newspaper in Delhi and with my bureau chief the member secretary of the Planning Commission. He was going to meet Manmohan Singh. They were both old friends and when we went to the sofa in the big office, Dr. Manmohan Singh was wearing well-polished shoes. My boss noticed that a crease was ripping through one spot on the flat leather of his shoe. In a light-hearted tone, he suggested buying new shoes. Sahib’s answer was that he had bought his house with the savings of his previous job in UNO. Now they are starting to save for their daughters’ hands.
After some time I had to go to the house of another member of the commission who was an eminent scientist. He apologized for not being able to give me tea and openly told me that the price of sugar has gone up so much that it is difficult to buy.
What a day they were too. Even the people occupying high positions in the government used to live a simple life. In general, there was a discussion about the scarcity of goods and restrictions in the world of the country’s economy by impoverishment or domestically. There was a similar type of economy that Dr. In 1991, Manmohan Singh got freedom from the restrictions. Then somewhere producers were looking for consumers.
It is a fact that Dr. Much of the work done by Manmohan Singh in 1991 was also given to him. As he himself once said in an interview, it was a team effort in which everyone from the unnamed PV Narasimha Rao to his Principal Secretary AN Verma and officials posted in the Industries and Commerce Ministries played their respective roles. Yashwant Sinha, while the finance minister in the Chandra Shekhar government, maintained the state of bankruptcy until the Rao government took oath. However, there is no doubt that the critical phase that started the new era of India came when Dr. Manmohan Singh presented his first budget as the Finance Minister. In it, he used Victor Hugo’s statement that ‘no force in the world can stop an idea whose time has come’ and concluded his speech with the powerful words that ‘the whole world will open its ears and hear clearly – Let’s hear clearly that India has woken up. We will succeed and we will overcome every difficulty.”
So, if you want to establish a balance, then Dr. For the things that happened during Manmohan Singh’s tenure as Prime Minister, he received as much criticism as he probably did not deserve. The situation before them was very difficult: a loose coalition government in which everyone could take what they wanted, a troubled government that needed the support of communists known to be obstructionists, a cabinet with the majority of ministers loyal to the president. Instead of a minister, it was with Sonia Gandhi and Mrs. Gandhi herself who held the reins of power to a certain extent and established a kind of Dusangarh government. was Dr. Manmohan Singh was the Prime Minister but he did not really have complete control.
And yet, he failed to give his due leadership. Although he tried to philosophize the politics of possibility, he certainly did not expand the range of possibilities as I openly shared my sentiments with him during my personal kind of friendly conversation. Dr. Manmohan Singh’s reply was that he had no political ambition of his own. It seems a strange thing for a Prime Minister to say. Mrs. Sonia Gandhi has to be credited with the fact that Dr. Manmohan Singh’s government was responsible for many major initiatives such as Right to Information, NREGA and Right to Food programmes. Except for the loan waiver of farmers, it seemed like Dr. Manmohan Singh had lost his original ideas.
What you are left with in the end is their personal strengths. The transparent clarity, the sense of public purpose, the decency and politeness that permeated every meeting, the depth of understanding and wisdom revealed at every meeting, the occasional bit of humor that showed their ability to laugh at difficult times. Apart from this, the respect built towards leaders like Singapore’s former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew also remains with us.
And also that he used to say a lot in few words. At the end of 1996, when I mentioned that the Rao government would not introduce economic reforms in its manifesto for the next elections, Dr. Manmohan Singh Huron thought for a moment and asked, “Apart from this, is there anything better to talk about?”
Commentators Dr. Manmohan Singh’s humility has been referred to. Of course, his demeanor was naturally polite, but for a long time I felt that he thought of himself as superior to those around him – and with good reason. If that was the case, they undoubtedly had the better sense to keep this self-evaluation well hidden. In fact, he also knew how to play on the pride of others, taking over the next with open praise – I watched him do this more than once. An example of this is a slightly exaggerated statement about George W. Bush during a banquet at the Taj Palace Hotel in Delhi, when he told the visiting American president that the whole of India loves him (Bush).
He did the same with IMF Managing Director (MD) Michel Camdesus, who in 1991 approved a much-needed loan for India. Later, when Mitchell came to a dinner in Delhi, Dr. Manmohan addressed his guest (if my memory serves me correctly) as ‘Sir’ in the same style of open praise. Perhaps, it can also be considered a characteristic of Indian behavior towards a guest. But sitting there, I felt that no finance minister of India should address an IMF official in this manner.
When he received criticism, he faced it with all wisdom, never mentioning it in private meetings or interviews. Releasing the first book published by the book division of the newspaper, he said that he sees the criticism in connection with the failures of the government, but also said that the newspaper should at least give credit for the achievements of the government. This point was reasonable.
Dr. in Cambridge Ashok was a friend and contemporary of Manmohan Singh. The criticism made by Desai has to be mentioned here. As a sharp and satirical columnist, Desai wrote in or around 1995 that Dr. Manmohan was honest in person but he tolerated corrupt people around him. Dr. Manmohan Singh called me to express his anger and asked how he can save himself from such slander. I told him that the writer is his friend and I can get him to talk to Desai. Many years passed when Desai told me that Dr. Manmohan has finally forgiven her. But the truth is that Desai had put his finger in the right place.
However, the open air that we have breathed, is reflected in the event that Dr. Vigyan Bhawan. A book was kept for release in honor of Manmohan Singh and the comments of the people present there are noteworthy. This book is written by Ishar Judge Ahluwalia and Dr. in Oxford. Edited by Ian Little, who was Manmohan’s teacher. Ahluwalia invited me to come as a speaker at the function and I said what I wanted to say there, but the critical comments were light-hearted. Although Raghuram Rajan did not stop, at the time he was an adviser to the Prime Minister as well as teaching in Chicago, Rajan was quite critical. I can’t even think of any other government under which the speaker at an event held in honor of the Prime Minister criticizes his government to his face and then eats with him! Such was the freedom of those times.
As a journalist, I have been fortunate to have Dr. I had the opportunity to interact with Manmohan Singh, I enjoyed his warmth and courtesy, I rose from each meeting with a new dimension of his wisdom and all the criticisms I made of him and his government will always remain in my mind. This great scion of India will have the highest respect. His death has been more painful for me than the departure of any other person from this world.
