Manmohan Singh’s decisions that affected a billion lives

People in India reflect on former Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s contribution to the country his death on Thursday evening.

Singh, who served two consecutive terms in the top post between 2004 and 2014, was seen as the architect of India’s economic liberalization that changed the country’s growth trajectory.

The first Prime Minister since Jawaharlal Nehru to return to power, Singh was also the first Sikh to hold the highest office.

Known as a soft-spoken technocrat, he previously headed India’s central bank, served as finance minister and minister, and led the opposition in the upper house of parliament.

Here are five milestones in Singh’s life that shaped his career and had a lasting impact on more than a billion Indians.

Singh was appointed Finance Minister in 1991 by the Congress Party-led government under Prime Minister PV Narsimha Rao.

India’s economy was facing a serious financial crisis at the time, with the country’s foreign reserves at dangerously low levels, barely enough to pay for two weeks’ worth of imports.

Singh spearheaded an initiative to deregulate the economy to avoid the collapse he believed was otherwise inevitable. Despite stiff opposition from members of his government and party, Singh prevailed.

He took bold measures that included devaluation of the currency, reduction of import tariffs and privatization of state-owned companies.

He is known to have said in Parliament during his first Budget speech in 1991 that “no power on Earth can stop an idea whose time has come”.

Later, as Prime Minister, Singh continued to build on his economic reform measures, lifting millions of Indians out of poverty and helping India grow as one of the world’s fastest-growing major economies.

The Congress party made a comeback in the 2004 elections, unexpectedly defeating the government led by Atal Bihari Vajpayee of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Congress leader Sonia Gandhi was expected to lead the government, but many members of the outgoing ruling party raised doubts over the fact that she was born in Italy. She declined the position and instead suggested the name of Singh, who was seen as an uncontroversial consensus candidate with great personal integrity.

In the following parliamentary elections, he helped his party win a larger mandate, but critics often called him a “remote control” prime minister controlled by the Gandhi family.

Singh often refused to comment on such allegations and focused on work.

He may have started his first stint as Prime Minister with some reluctance, but he soon established his authority in the highest office.

During Singh’s tenure, particularly between 2004 and 2009, the country’s GDP grew at a healthy average rate of around 8%, the second fastest among major economies.

He took bold decisions on reforms and attracted more foreign investment to the country. Experts believe that he protected India from the global financial crisis of 2008.

But his second term, in alliance with a splinter group of parties, was marred by allegations of corruption against some of his cabinet, although his personal integrity was never questioned.

In response to the allegations in 2014, at his last press conference as prime minister, he told reporters that he hoped history would judge him differently.

“I sincerely believe that history will be more kind to me than the modern media, and for that matter, the opposition parties in the parliament,” he said.

“I think that, given the circumstances and the demands of coalition politics, I did the best I could in the circumstances.”

As Prime Minister, Singh took several far-reaching decisions that continue to affect the health of Indian democracy even today.

He introduced new laws that strengthened and guaranteed the right to demand information from the government, allowing citizens extraordinary powers to hold officials accountable.

He also introduced a rural employment scheme that guaranteed livelihoods for at least 100 days, a measure economists said had a major impact on rural incomes and poverty reduction.

He also passed a law that guaranteed the right to free and compulsory education for children between the ages of 6 and 14, significantly reducing school dropout rates.

His government also introduced a unique identification project called Aadhar to improve financial inclusion and provide social benefits to the poor. The current federal government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi still keeps Aadhaar as the cornerstone of many of its policies.

In 1984, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated by her Sikh bodyguards in revenge for a military operation she had ordered against separatists holed up in Sikhism’s holiest temple in Amritsar, northern India.

Her death sparked widespread violence that resulted in the deaths of more than 3,000 Sikhs and widespread destruction of their property.

Singh formally apologized to the nation in 2005 in Parliament, saying the violence was “a denial of the concept of statehood enshrined in our constitution”.

“I have no hesitation in apologizing to the Sikh community. I apologize not only to the Sikh community but to the entire Indian nation,” he said.

No other prime minister, especially from the Congress party, has gone so far as to apologize in Parliament for the riots.

In 2008, Singh signed a historic treaty with the US to end India’s nuclear isolation following the 1998 test of the weapon system.

His government argued that the deal would help meet India’s growing energy needs and support its healthy growth rate.

The deal, seen as a watershed moment in Indo-US relations, promises to waive India’s right to begin civilian nuclear weapons trade with the US and the rest of the world.

But it faced massive opposition, with critics of the deal arguing that it would jeopardize India’s sovereignty and independence in foreign policy. In protest, the Left Front refused to support the ruling alliance.

Singh, however, managed to save and his government and deal.