A Mixed Legacy

THAT MANMOHAN SINGH was a distinguished Son of India is stating the obvious. His life journey is an inspiration, from humble beginnings in West Punjab to academic excellence at Oxbridge to occupying every conceivable position for an economist technocrat in the government of India—chief economic advisor (CEA), finance secretary, RBI governor, Planning Commission deputy chairman, finance minister, and prime minister of India.

Beneath that outstanding CV and the mild manner lie four different Manmohan Singhs in public life—the bureaucrat, the finance minister, first-term prime minister, and second-term prime minister. Each is inevitably a part of his legacy.

Manmohan Singh first occupied senior positions in officialdom in the 1970s and 1980s. This was the period when poor economic decision-making, from the Janata Party’s infamous expulsion of foreign investors, including Coca Cola to Rajiv Gandhi’s debt-fuelled binge of the 1980s, actually led to the economic crisis of 1991. Singh was finance secretary in the mostly disastrous and short-lived Janata government. He made the transition to Indira Gandhi’s government with ease and became RBI governor. He spent the Rajiv Gandhi years as deputy chairman of the Planning Commission. At no point was he a strong advocate of market reforms. In his favour, you could say that Singh was the quintessential civil servant, implementing without fuss the wishes of the political establishment even when his own economics may have suggested the opposite. Defining policies was not his job. His critics would say that his career interests took priority over any belief system. There is some truth to both.

When he was chosen as finance minister by PV Narasimha Rao in 1991, Singh stepped out of the civil service and into politics. Yet, he was very much a technocrat and the reason for his appointment was the credibility he brought to the office as an internationally regarded economist in a time of unprecedented crisis. Contrary to much of public commentary, it was not Singh who was the prime mover of reforms. It was Narasimha Rao. The then prime minister did the heavy lifting of persuading a sceptical Congress and of gathering the necessary majority for his minority government in Parliament to push tough measures. Singh had an important role—not the architect but the builder/implementer who got political cover from his boss. He did his job with aplomb, as an empowered civil servant would do. Perhaps pro-market reform was also what Singh truly believed in and was simply biding his time through his earlier career.

When Singh became prime minister of India eight years after he demitted the office of finance minister, there was much hope that the reforms initiated by the Vajpayee government would continue to be accelerated by the man who began the market reform process. But that was not to be. Some reforms like privatisation were halted in their tracks. In his first term, Singh still got the benefit of doubt. His government relied on the support of the communists for whom market reform was anathema. Growth was healthy courtesy the Vajpayee reforms and favourable global economic conditions. And Singh did stick his neck out for the Indo-US nuclear deal. He seemed to have conviction and was willing to push the envelope for India’s strategic interests.

It was his second term as prime minister where it became evident that Singh, despite a bigger mandate, did not have the conviction for economic reform. On his watch, India lurched towards the fragile five with macroeconomic mismanagement, retrospective taxation, and policy paralysis. The India story which he had co-scripted as finance minister was on the brink. It was evident that Singh was in his civil servant mode from the 1970s and 1980s, deferring completely to the real political power.

Perhaps if he had resigned in the course of UPA 2, his legacy would have been of an instinctive reformist technocrat who played the long game and acted right when given political cover. By choosing to preside over a chaotic, anti-reform and scandal-ridden government, he gave the impression that office mattered more than conviction or reform. Like many other men of history, his legacy is decidedly mixed, both inspiring and frustrating.

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