| Biography Dr. Manmohan Singh (Punjabi: ਮਨਮੋਹਨ ਸਿੰਘ, Hindi: मनमोहन सिंह) is the 14th, and current Prime Minister of India. He was born on 26 September 1932, Gah, West Punjab (now in Pakistan) and is member of the left-of-centre Indian National Congress party. The first Sikh Indian prime minister, Singh was sworn in on May 22, 2004. He is a native Punjabi speaker.
Dr. Singh is an economist by trade, and has formerly served in the International Monetary Fund. His economics education included an undergraduate (1952) and a master's degree (1954) from Punjab University; an undergraduate degree (1957) from Cambridge University (St. John's College); and a doctorate (1962) from Oxford University (Nuffield College). Singh is also known as a low-key politician, enjoying an image as "squeaky clean." He was awarded the Outstanding Parliamentarian Award in 2002. Singh is held in high esteem, and regard, all over the country and the world. Before becoming prime minister, he served as an advisor to party president Sonia Gandhi and as the finance minister under Prime Minister Narasimha Rao. [1] Singh has been married since 1958; he and his wife, Mrs. Gursharan Kaur have three daughters. Their youngest daughter, Amrit Singh, is a Yale Law School-educated attorney in the New York City ACLU.
Although his economic policies - which included the reduction of several socialist policies - were widely popular, especially among the middle class, Singh lost his seat in the Lok Sabha from South Delhi in 1999. He is thus the only Indian Prime Minister never to have been an elected member of the Lower House of Parliament. He was also a member of the Rajya Sabha from Assam since 1991 and the upper house leader of the opposition from 1998 - 2004 when India was governed by a coalition led by the Bharatiya Janata Party, or BJP.
Economic Reforms and Ascent to Power
Singh served as the governor of the Reserve Bank of India in the late 1980s, and was elevated to finance minister in 1991 by Prime Minister Narasimha Rao.
Singh is widely regarded as the architect of India's original economic reform programme which was enacted in 1991 under Rao's administration. The economic liberalization package pushed by Singh and Rao opened the nation to foreign direct investment and reduced the red tape that had previously impeded business growth. The liberalization was prompted by an acute balance-of-payments crisis whereby the Indian government was left without sufficient reserves to meet its obligations, and had begun preparations to mortgage its gold reserves to the Bank of England in order to obtain the cash reserves needed to run the country.
Many see the 1991 liberalization as the first of a series of economic liberalizations throughout the 1990s and 2000s that have raised India's growth rates substantially since the early 1990s. Despite its economic liberalization policies, Rao's government was defeated in the next election because Rao and other top ministers were widely seen as corrupt.
Opposition and 2004 Election
Singh stayed with the Congress Party despite continuous marginalization and defeats in the elections of 1996, 1998 and 1999. He did not join the rebels in a major split which occurred in 1999, when many major Congress leaders objected to Sonia Gandhi's rise as Congress President and Leader of the Opposition. Being touted as the Congress choice for the PM's job, she became a target for nationalists who objected to her Italian birth. It seemed that a party which turned to old links to the Nehru family and a foreigner for political leadership had no future or potential to look forward to. But Singh continued to stay on as a leader within the party, most notably helping to revamp the party's platform and organization.
The Congress alliance won a surprisingly high number of seats in the Parliamentary elections of 2004, owing largely to a nationwide disenchantment of millions of poorer citizens with the BJP's focus on the surging middle-class, and also its dismal record in handling religious tensions. The Left Front decided to support a Congress alliance government from outside in order to keep the "communal forces" out of power. Sonia Gandhi was elected leader of the Congress Parliamentary Party and was expected to become the Prime Minister. In a surprise move, she declined to accept the post and instead nominated Singh. Singh secured the nomination for prime minister on May 19, 2004 when President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam officially asked him to form a government. Although most expected him to head the Finance Ministry himself, he entrusted the job to P. Chidambaram.
His appointment is notable as it comes 20 years after India witnessed significant tensions between the Indian central government and the Punjabi Sikh community. After Congress Party Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, the mother-in-law of Sonia Gandhi, ordered central government troops to storm the Golden Temple (the holiest site in Sikhism) in Amritsar, Punjab to quell a separatist movement, she was assassinated by her Sikh bodyguards. The result was a tremendous nationwide crisis in which many innocent Sikhs were murdered in riots at the behest of Congress party heavyweights.
Singh's image is of an intellectual, a political leader of integrity (a prevalent stereotypical public perception denounces most national bureaucracies as corrupt and tainted), someone who is compassionate and attentive to common people, and as a recognised technocrat. Although legislative achievements have been few and the Congress-led alliance is routinely hampered by conflicts and scandals, Singh's administration has focused on reducing the fiscal deficit, providing debt-relief to poor farmers, extending social programs and advancing the pro-industry economic and tax policies that have launched the country on a major economic expansion course since 2002. Singh has been the image of the Congress campaign to defuse religious tensions and conflicts and bolster political support from minorities like Muslims and Christians.The Prime Minister's foreign policy has been to continue the new peace process with Pakistan initiated by his predecessor, Atal Bihari Vajpayee. Exchange visits by top leaders from both countries have highlighted this year, as has reduced terrorism and increased prosperity in the state of Kashmir. The peace process has also been used by the government to build stronger relations with the United States, China and European nations. But the Government suffered a setback when it lost the support of a key ally, Russia, for its bid for a permanent membership to the U.N. Security Council with veto privileges.
While Manmohan Singh has a long and illustrious past as an administrator, his role as a political figure has been relatively low-profile. He has only contested the Lok Sabha (People's House) once in his career, when he lost to BJP candidate Vijay Kumar Malhotra from the South Delhi seat in 1999. Since 1991, he has been consistently re-nominated to the Rajya Sabha. In June of 2001, briefly following the Congress victory in the eastern state of Assam, space was made for his election to Rajya Sabha from that state. If the Congress loses power in Assam in 2006, he will likely be re-nominated from another state.
While Singh heads the United Progressive Alliance government, Sonia Gandhi is generally regarded as the true political head of the Congress Party. Most of the Indian media has speculated that ministers in Singh's cabinet have been nominated at the behest of Ms. Gandhi, and likewise, partners of the Congress, such as Laloo Prasad Yadav, meet Sonia directly to discuss any issues pertaining to the alliance. Singh has rarely made appearances during canvassing for the party, and was left in the background during the 82nd All India Congress plenary in Hyderabad, where Congress workers celebrated Sonia's heir-apparent, Rahul Gandhi. To top it all off, the Leftist parties supporting the government from outside also rarely address Mr. Singh directly.
As a result of this, the BJP-led opposition has often referred to Manmohan Singh as the Prime Minister and Sonia Gandhi as the "Super Prime-Minister". Faced with a lack of respect in either his own party, its allies, or the opposition, Singh's tenure has been markedly different from that of his predecessor, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who could command respect across the political spectrum. Singh's lack of knowledge on party affairs and key decisions made by Congress leaders has left him embarrassed on numerous ocassions, and along with those leaders, the opposition, which initially extended him a warm welcome in 2004, has become more and more hostile towards him. Some examples of this include: The Opposition's demand for resignation of Railway Minister Laloo Prasad Yadav over corruption cases and the controversial installation of Shibu Soren as Jharkhand's Chief Minister despite the BJP presenting a majority.
Singh is a soft-spoken man who has dealt with a major transition between comfortable administrative work and being India's political leader. This has been illustrated by his ability to mingle with world leaders and become vocally critical of the Opposition. His lack of involvement in political affairs has also meant that he has been able to dedicate himself to pet projects, especially on the financial front. It is that squeaky-clean image which is expected to make Singh an acceptable Prime Minister for the Congress, its allies, and the Leftist parties for the full five-year tenure.
Career
First Class Honours degree in Economics, University of Cambridge, (1957)
Punjab University, Chandigarh, India
Senior Lecturer, Economics (1957-1959)
Professor of International Trade (1969-1971)
Reader (1959-1963)
Professor (1963-1965)
D.Phil in Economics, Nuffield College at Oxford University, (1962)
Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi
Honorary Professor (1996)
Chief, Financing for Trade Section, UNCTAD, United Nations Secretariat,New York
1966 : Economic Affairs Officer 1966
Economic Advisor, Ministry of Foreign Trade, India (1971-1972)
Chief Economic Advisor, Ministry of Finance, India, (1972-1976)
Honorary Professor, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi (1976)
Director, Reserve Bank of India (1976-1980)
Director, Industrial Development Bank of India (1976-1980)
Secretary, Ministry of Finance (Department of Economic Affairs), Government of India, (1977-1980)
Governor, Reserve Bank of India (1982-1985)
Deputy Chairman, Planning Commission of India, (1985-1987)
Advisor to Prime Minister of India on Economic Affairs (1990-1991)
Finance Minister of India, (June 21, 1991 - May 15, 1996)
Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha
Prime Minister of India (May 22, 2004 - Present) |
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