Manmohan Singh: A personal memoir

I first met Manmohan Singh in 1981. As a reporter for Business Standard in Delhi, I had accompanied my bureau chief to meet the member-secretary of the Planning Commission.

- TN NINAN

They were old friends, and as we sat on the sofa in the expansive office, my boss noticed that the leather upper of Dr Singh's well-polished shoe had a tear at the crease. "Why don't you get new shoes?" my bureau chief asked in friendly banter.

Dr Singh's response was that with the savings from his last UN assignment, he had built a house for himself. Now he needed to save for getting his daughters married.

Shortly afterwards, I visited another member of the Commission at his home. The distinguished scientist apologised for not being able to offer me a cup of tea. "Sugar has become so expensive," he explained.

Such were the times, when people even at the apex of the government lived modest lives on modest salaries in an economy known globally for poverty and domestically for shortages and controls of every kind. And such was the economy that Dr Singh released from controls in 1991. Producers now chase consumers, as they should.

In truth, Dr Singh got more than his fair share of credit for what was done in 1991. As he himself once said in an interview, it was a team effort, and everyone, from the mostly unsung PV Narasimha Rao to his principal secretary AN Verma, and others in the industry and commerce ministries played their roles—including Yashwant Sinha, who, as finance minister under Chandra Shekhar, did the fire-fighting to stave off bankruptcy until the Rao government was sworn in. But there can be little doubt that the critical event signalling a new era for India was Dr Singh's 1991 Budget in which he quoted Victor Hugo to say that no power on earth could stop an idea whose time has come, and ended with the ringing words: "Let the whole world hear it loud and clear. India is now awake. We shall prevail, we shall overcome."