The 14th Prime Minister of the country and the father of liberalism in the Indian economy, Dr. Manmohan Singh, is known all over the world for his economic reforms in India. If you ask a thousand people to name one of his qualities, one out of a thousand will say that he opened the Indian economy to the world and carried out bold economic reforms. But imagine if Dr. Manmohan Singh had not shown the courage to implement these economic reforms as the Finance Minister of Narasimha Rao, would there have been any other reason for him to be remembered in history forever? The answer to this question is, yes, there certainly would have been. There were not one but many reasons. It is no exaggeration to say that Dr. Manmohan Singh was such a ‘Parsa’ that whatever iron he touched, it turned into gold. The biggest example of this is that even if Dr. Manmohan Singh, the country’s fourth longest serving Prime Minister, had not been the Finance Minister or the Prime Minister, he would still have been immortalized in the history of India and the economic history of the world, because he had done very important changes in the Indian economy while holding many other important positions before becoming the Finance Minister and the Prime Minister.
Perhaps very few people know that it was Dr. Manmohan Singh who had prepared the economic model of the Green Revolution that has become accepted in India. To give strength and continuity to the Green Revolution, it was on his advice that the policy of investment in agriculture and Minimum Support Price (MSP) was implemented, due to which the farmers got benefits in the form of MSP to make the Green Revolution twice as successful day and night. It was Dr. Manmohan Singh who shaped India’s 5th Five Year Plan (1974-1979) and made it industrial and export-oriented. Dr. Manmohan Singh formulated sound policies to stabilize India’s foreign exchange policy and balance import-export, and his practical and effective work as the Governor of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) from 1982 to 1985 also saw many history-changing achievements. For example, the expansion of rural banks in India took place during his tenure as the Governor of RBI and it was during his tenure that priority was given to providing credit and financial assistance to rural areas.
It was Dr. Manmohan Singh who While serving as the Governor of the Reserve Bank of India, he implemented policies to provide loans at cheap interest rates for agriculture and small industries. While serving as the Governor of the RBI, the Export-Import Bank of India was established, which made an unparalleled contribution to increasing the country’s global trade by providing financial support to Indian exporters. He ensured a safe and sound banking system in the country and the policy framework created by him made the banks accountable and more efficient in their work. While serving as the Governor of the RBI, he launched the Gold Monetization Scheme, which fundamentally strengthened the foreign exchange reserves, which today places India among the leading foreign exchange-holding countries in the world.
The long line of economic reforms that Dr. Manmohan Singh drew while he was the Finance Minister and Prime Minister is unparalleled. The impact of which was felt not only in the Indian economy but also in the entire world economy. That is why US President Barack Obama had great respect for Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. He was the most educated Prime Minister in the world during his tenure as Prime Minister, that is why Obama used to repeatedly say one thing about Dr. Manmohan Singh that ‘When Dr. Manmohan Singh speaks, the whole world listens to him.’ We cannot ignore his historic contributions to the Indian economy beyond his tenure as Prime Minister and Finance Minister, because the fact is that he had already initiated an indirect stream of economic reforms before becoming the Finance Minister and Prime Minister. He had laid the foundation for the real liberalization and globalization of the Indian economy during the years 1985-87 while being the Vice Chairman of the Planning Commission. During this time, he had included the goal of boosting exports and giving priority to industrial development in the ‘core’ of the Indian economy.
Today, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) count India among the most important countries in the world and attach great importance to India’s reputation. But this would not have been the case if Dr. Manmohan Singh had joined the IMF as the Vice Chairman of the Planning Commission long before becoming the Finance Minister and Prime Minister. And the foundation of strong relations for India with the World Bank would not have been laid. Not only this, the economic cooperation and partnership that he promoted among developing countries while he was the head of the South-South Commission not only gave India global recognition but also global appreciation for Indian leadership. Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh was an internationally renowned economist and educationist. He was educated at Cambridge and Oxford Universities and demonstrated his talent as a student while studying there. In fact, he said and wrote in his doctoral dissertation ‘India’s Export Traders and Prospects for Self-Sustainable Growth’ all that he later tried out in practical terms in the Indian economy.
Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh Indian Political History
He is one of the leading figures of India. He will be placed in the same category as Nehru, Sardar Patel, Indira Gandhi and Atal Bihari Vajpayee. He transformed the Hindu growth rate of the Indian economy of two and a half to three percent into the fastest growing economy in the world. He put the Indian economy on the path to becoming the world’s most prosperous economy at a time when India had only two months’ worth of foreign exchange left to pay its import bills. Dr. Manmohan Singh, on the one hand, was the one who initiated liberalization and economic reforms, and on the other hand, he was the one who initiated some of the most essential basic welfare policies of the Indian economy. During his tenure as Prime Minister, the Indian government not only launched the Employment Guarantee Scheme and policies like ‘Food Security’, but also started the process of making Aadhaar cards for permanent and reliable identification of Indian citizens. Not only this, he gave legal status to the Right to Information (RTI) Bill to make Indian democracy accountable. He is one of the few politicians of the country whom no conspiracy of history will ever let forget.
Dr. Manmohan Singh, apart from being a world-renowned economist and visionary politician, has also been a great educationist. Many of the students he taught economics to at the Delhi School of Economics later became great personalities of the world. By representing India at global economic forums, Dr. Manmohan Singh not only made us an important voice of developing countries, but also developed countries were ready to listen to us due to his powerful voice. Dr. Manmohan Singh is truly one of the great personalities of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, who played an important role in making India the India it is today as Singh is King.
