Steering Indian Economy: One Journey Ends, Another Continues

The journey that started in 1991, though interrupted a few times, continues today

- P. Chidambaram

Sometimes I think Manmohan Singh had many lives. Scant details are available about his early life and education. All we know is that it was tough, dependent on the benevolence of relatives and scholarships, spartan when he studied in Cambridge and Oxford and, later in life, like a middle-class family's in sarkari Delhi. Singh started as an Economic Adviser to the government and dutifully carried out the policies of the government of the day. Apart from the fact that he was an excellent student, and he read extensively, there is not anything remarkable about the early years of his journey.

As the years rolled by, Singh held many positions in government, but he seems to have blended with the environment—controls and regulations, dominance of the public sector, protectionism, licences, permits and quotas, suspicion of the private sector, wariness about foreign trade especially imports, and all other incidents of a closed economy. There is no evidence that Singh rebelled against the economic policies of the day.

His tenure at the South Commission seems to have brought about a revolutionary change in his thinking and outlook. In a sense, it was a preparation for his work after 1991.