On March 30, 2015, former Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh arrived in New Delhi with his wife Gursharan Kaur to launch an online and app-based National Congress Party membership drive.
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Former Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh passed away on Tuesday at the age of 92, prompting a flurry of condolence messages and tributes from political leaders and industry giants on both sides of the aisle.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi called Singh one of India’s “most distinguished leaders” in a post in the X newspaper. Mr. Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party defeated Mr. Singh’s Congress alliance in the 2014 election and has been in power ever since.
Prime Minister Modi added that Singh was a “respected economist” who had left a “strong footprint” on India’s economic policy.
Before becoming Prime Minister in 2004, Mr. Singh served as Governor of the Reserve Bank of India in 1982 and Finance Minister in 1991.
As finance minister, he led a series of reforms that deregulated India’s economy and opened the country to foreign investment.
Faced with a severe balance of payments crisis, then Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao and Singh liberalized the economy, paving the way for rapid expansion in the following decades.
“History will forever honor his pivotal role in the 1991 transformation that reshaped India and opened it to the world,” said India’s second-richest man and chairman of Indian conglomerate Adani Group. Gautam Adani wrote:
Singh returned to politics in 2004 when the Congress-led coalition won a landslide election victory and party leader Sonia Gandhi appointed him prime minister.
During his tenure from 2004 to 2014, India’s gross domestic product initially expanded rapidly, and Mr. Singh was able to channel the new wealth into programs such as the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, which guaranteed jobs for the poor. Ta.
But the final years of Mr. Singh’s tenure as prime minister were marred by sclerotic growth, stalled reforms, and corruption allegations against some members of his government.
As prime minister, Singh visited the US multiple times and played a pivotal role in strengthening ties between India and Washington. When US President George W. Bush visited India in 2006, Mr. Singh successfully brokered a deal that gave India access to US nuclear technology.
Commenting on Singh’s death, the U.S. State Department said, “Dr. Singh was one of the greatest champions of the U.S.-India strategic partnership, and his work is the foundation of much of what our two countries have accomplished together over the past two decades.” “I built it,” he wrote.
Apart from the United States, Mr. Singh also strengthened ties with India and Russia. He is a regular attendee of the India-Russia Annual Summit, which started in 2000 and aims to deepen cooperation between the two countries and the BRICs countries.
“Dr. Manmohan Singh’s contribution to bilateral relations is immeasurable,” Denis Alipov, Russia’s ambassador to India, said in X.
