Singh and his colleagues were able to persuade us that in a post-socialist, market-led , business, we, too, may be free to fight our , dreams. With learning and hard labor, our lives, too, may be significantly better than our parents’, upward mobility may no longer be an exclusive preserve of the wealthy.
The transformation job stayed on course throughout the 1990s despite changes in institutions. However, Singh’s second word as prime minister saw the deterioration of the claim.
The ungainly Congress-led , partnership government he ran from 2009 was besieged, from one side, by crony entrepreneurs gorging on loan from state-owned lenders just to siphon off funds into , their Swiss bank accounts. From the other side, it was under attack by a political opposition that blamed Singh’s indecisive leadership for rampant corruption, high inflation, slowing growth and a falling rupee.
” I do not believe that I have been a weak prime minister”, Singh said in one of his last press conferences, just a few months before the Hindu right-wing leader Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party swept the 2014 election. I sincerely believe that history will benefit me more than the current media or, for that matter, the opposition in parliament.
That prediction didn’t take too long to get , tested. In November 2016, Prime Minister Modi , banned 86 per cent of India’s currency overnight. Singh, who described the move as “organised loot and legalised plunder”  , said it would crush , economic growth. He was right.