Manmohan Singh

Manmohan Singh (1932–2024) was an Indian economist, civil servant, and Congress Party politician who served two terms as Prime Minister of India (2004–2014), leading the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) coalition government. He was the first Sikh to hold the office and the first prime minister since Jawaharlal Nehru to be re-elected after completing a full term.

Trained at Panjab University, Cambridge, and Oxford, Singh built his career in economic policy, serving as Chief Economic Adviser, Reserve Bank of India Governor (1982–1985), and head of the Planning Commission. As Finance Minister under Prime Minister P. V. Narasimha Rao (1991–1996), he is widely credited with engineering India's response to the 1991 balance-of-payments crisis through structural reforms that dismantled the License Raj, devalued the rupee, opened sectors to foreign investment, and reduced tariffs—measures that reoriented India toward a market economy.

As Prime Minister, his government oversaw sustained high GDP growth in the mid-2000s, passed the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) in 2005, and enacted the Right to Information Act (2005) and the Right to Education Act (2009). In foreign policy, his signature achievement was the Indo–U.S. Civil Nuclear Agreement (signed 2008), which ended India's nuclear isolation by securing a Nuclear Suppliers Group waiver despite India remaining outside the NPT. His government also deepened ties with ASEAN and pursued the "Look East" policy.

Singh's second term was clouded by corruption scandals (notably the 2G spectrum and Coalgate allegations), slowing growth, and policy paralysis criticism, contributing to the Congress Party's heavy 2014 defeat by the BJP under Narendra Modi. He remained a member of the Rajya Sabha representing Assam (and later Rajasthan) for much of his political career. He died on 26 December 2024. Singh is remembered as a soft-spoken technocrat whose reforms shaped modern India's economic trajectory.