Manmohan Singh’s decisions that shaped a billion lives

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

Singh, who held the top article for two consecutive terms between 2004 and 2014, was seen as an engineer of India’s financial liberalisation which changed the country’s development path.

Singh was also the first Sikh to take business, becoming the first prime minister since Jawaharlal Nehru’s return to power.

Known as a soft-spoken reformer, he had previously headed India’s northern banks, served as a finance minister and secretary, and led the opposition in the lower house of parliament.

Five events from Singh’s existence have shaped his career and affected more than a billion Indians forever.

Under the leadership of the Congress party, under the leadership of excellent secretary PV Narsimha Rao, Singh was appointed finance minister in 1991.

India’s economy at the time was facing a severe financial crisis, with the country’s international resources at a extremely low levels, little enough to pay for two days of goods.

Singh spearheaded the effort to privatize the business to prevent it from collapsing, which he claimed was going to happen soon. Despite thick opposition from people of his state and party, Singh prevailed.

He took strong methods that included devaluing the money, reducing transfer taxes and privatising state-owned businesses.

He was cited as saying in congress during his first budget speech in 1991 that” no power on Earth you stop an idea whose time has come.”

Eventually, as prime minister, Singh continued to build on his economic reform steps, lifting millions of Indians out of hunger and contributing to India’s increase as one of the world’s fastest-growing big markets.

In the 2004 elections, the Congress party made a comeback, handing a surprise defeat to the Bharatiya Janata Party ( BJP) leader Atal Bihari Vajpayee.

Sonia Gandhi, the head of the Congress, was widely expected to lead the administration, but many in the resuming ruling party questioned her birthplace in Italy. She declined to take up the post and instead proposed Singh’s name, who was seen as a non-controversial, consensus candidate of great personal integrity.

In the next parliamentary election, he helped his party win a bigger mandate, but critics often termed him a “remote-controlled” prime minister managed by the Gandhi family.

Singh frequently kept his attention on his job by not making any comments on these allegations.

He may have had some reservations when he first stepped into the shoes of prime minister, but he soon established his authority.

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

He made bold reform moves and encouraged more foreign investment in the nation. He is credited by experts as shielding India from the global financial crisis of 2008.

However, his second term, which he led in an alliance with a number of different political parties, was marred by allegations of corruption against some of his cabinet ministers, despite the fact that his personal integrity was never challenged.

In his final press conference as prime minister in 2014, he said he hoped history would interpret these allegations.

” I honestly believe that history will be kinder to me than the contemporary media, or for that matter, the opposition parties in parliament”, he said.

” I believe that I have done the best I could under the circumstances, taking the circumstances and the compulsions of a coalition polity,” he said.

As prime minister, Singh made a number of important decisions that still have an impact on the state of Indian democracy today.

He passed new laws that expanded and made it easier for people to ask government officials for information, giving them an extraordinary authority to hold officials accountable.

Additionally, he introduced a rural employment program that provided a minimum of 100 days of guaranteed employment, which economists said had a significant influence on rural incomes and poverty reduction.

Additionally, he passed a law that significantly reduced the number of students who drop out of school between the ages of 6 and 14 and guaranteed the right to free and compulsory education.

In order to improve access to welfare benefits and financial inclusion, his government also launched Aadhar, a special identity initiative. The current federal government, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has continued to use Aadhar as the foundation of many of its policies.

Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was killed in 1984 by her Sikh bodyguards to vengeance a military operation she had ordered against separatists hiding in Sikhism’s most holy temple in northern India’s Amritsar.

More than 3, 000 Sikhs were killed and their property was extensively destroyed as a result of her death.

Singh formally apologised to the nation in 2005 in parliament, saying the violence were” the negation of the concept of nationhood enshrined in our constitution”.

I’m ready to express my regret to the Sikh community without hesitation. I apologise not only to the Sikh community, but to the whole Indian nation”, he said.

No other prime minister has ever gone this far to express his regret in parliament for the riots, especially from the Congress party.

In 2008, Singh and the US signed a historic agreement to end India’s nuclear isolation following its 1998 testing of the weapon system.

The deal, according to his government, would help meet India’s growing energy needs and maintain its healthy growth rate.

The agreement, which was regarded as a turning point in India-US relations, stipulated that India would be able to launch civilian nuclear trade with the US and the rest of the world.

However, it faced significant opposition, with some claiming that the deal would impede India’s right to choose between foreign policy and sovereignty. In protest, the Left Front withdrew support from the governing alliance.

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