India’s New Prime Minister - The Reluctant King

Sonia Gandhi’s refusal to take up the post of Prime Minster in India lead to some frantic activity in the majority party and among the names thrown up for the post, was Dr Manmohan Singh.

India’s new Prime Minister is a non-decrepit little Sikh, an extremely well educated and intelligent man, with a whole number of recognitions piled on his little person. He was at the helm of India’s economic reforms process when it started years ago, knows his figures inside out as he has been the Governor of the Reserve Bank, and also a professor with a number of Economics text books to his credit. Dr Manmohan Singh is the last man who would have lobbied or hungered for..or even desired power. He is most at home with his books and theories. But here he is, heading the world’s largest democracy. A religiously inclined but not fanatic person, his studies, his books and his beloved economics come to him first. Of course, there is Gursharan Kaur, his wife of 46 years, and his three daughters, all of whom are…you guessed it right, academicians. One is a lecturer at ST Stephens., one of Delhi’s most prestigious Colleges, while another is a professor with Delhi University.

The most interesting point is that he was born in Gah, in erstwhile West Punjab, now in Pakistan..so we can actually start an SMS joke on Indian PM anyways being a foreigner. His academic career, as expected, has been brilliant. After doing his Masters from Punjab University in Chandigarh, in 1954 he was awarded the Wright's Prize for distinguished performance at St John's College, Cambridge, 1955 and 1957; Wrenbury scholar, University of Cambridge, 1957; DPhil in Oxford.

With his degrees, Dr Singh taught Economics for almost all his life, either as a full time faculty or visiting faculty in India’s premiere Institutes, like the Jawaharlal Nehru University or the Delhi School of Economics.

Since 1971 he has been on various posts for the government, as an Economic ministry of foreign trade and thereafter between 1972 and 1976, as Chief economic advisor, ministry of finance. Government of India. His [plum assignment came in 1976 when he took over the post of The Director of Reserve Bank, India’s central banking authority.

After holding a mind boggling number of advisory positions, Dr Manmohan Singh was made the Union Finance Minister in 1991, under the youngest PM India has known, Rajeev Gandhi. This was the chance for the economic reforms to start and they did, completely changing the look of the Indian economy.

Among his peers, DR Singh is best known for his mild manners, soft spoken gentleness and extreme intelligence which he discloses very sparingly. His rise to such designations is itself remarkable because if anything, he is never aggressive enough to demand anything, let alone fight for a post.

He is also known to have almost no airs and graces that come with the sort of posts he has been holding, speaks very softly, is very modest about his achievements and humble to the point of being reticent.

Little known facts about him would always be little known, if he could help it. But now the modest man will have to stand up and take the accolades. He has very little choice now that the full limelight has been trained on him.

Very few people know that DR Singh’s permanent address is an unknown little house in a small town Dispur, near Guwahati…and not some prosperous Punjab neighborhood. He studied in Amritsar at the Hindu Sabha School and being the studious boy that he still is, spent most of his time studying.

One of DR Singh’s interests is poetry, which he liberally quotes from, even during major critical economic, financial situations, like presenting the budget in 1994. At that point of time he quoted from Victor Hugo, saying," "No power on earth can stop an idea whose time has come." We can presume he meant the time for economic reforms had come. With this man at the helm, the Indian industry is now at peace, completely confident that he will take care of their and everybody else’s interests.