Lessons from Manmohan Singh

Singh, as an RBI governor living through the permissive 1980s, understood the value of fiscal conservatism and implemented it as finance minister

- ASHIMA GOYAL Emeritus professor, Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, Mumbai

IN ADDITION TO his invaluable contributions, Manmohan Singh has left powerful lessons for us with his personality as well as his policy successes and failures.

As a person, he retained his gentleness, humility, and simplicity; however exalted his post. Lesson one thus is that decency plus ability gets results, despite views to the contrary. It gave him the opportunities he wanted to serve the country.

With his sharp intellect and deep experience within the system, he understood what was feasible. While he did not waste his time tilting at windmills, he showed tremendous courage and persistence in whatever he undertook. The “sarfaroshiki tamanna” was clear in his famous Budget speech. While we can wish he had done more, especially in his second term as Prime Minister, there were the compulsions of a coalition government and a vitiated national atmosphere.

The Indian voter seems to have learnt this lesson and has largely voted stable governments since, both at the Centre and in states while keeping competition alive and often punishing non-performance.

The lesson for governments is that although delivery is made more feasible, re-election is conditional on performance.

Many of the corruption allegations during the second tenure of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) turned out to be overdone. But they originated from too much discretion in resource allocation, even as growth was driving up their value.

Systemic improvements and a better understanding among regulatory and judicial institutions of necessity for economic expertise did yield results.