Dr. Manmohan Singh: The Economist PM who pushed India into perpetual economic decline twice

Dr. Manmohan Singh: Praised for reform but criticized for economic missteps

All the old Congress Lutyens mainstream media elements are back in action as the news came that 92-year-old former Prime Minister of India, Dr. Manmohan Singh passed away. The surprising part is the often reliable ‘Cultural nationalist’ anchors in the media too took a sudden U-turn and were seen praising Dr Singh sky-high assembling all the known Congress cabal in their news panels. Yet again it was a rerun of a familiar sight which always dished out a one-sided picture ignoring the glaring blunders, with an honorable exception or two.

It is perhaps the soft-hearted and often hypocritical Indian psyche that ignores and forgets all the ills, loot, plunder, corruption, and anti-Hindu policies of persons sitting in high offices, the moment the person dies. It’s still a glaring miss in the discussion of Dr. Manmohan Singh’s demise as the many blunders of his long 10-year rule (2004-14) are still fresh in national memory, and haven’t faded out of public discourse. Yet the mainstream media is playing footsie with the people of India, taking them for granted.

From all accounts, Dr. Manmohan Singh led a glorious life, personal as well as professional. He ended up as a subservient remote-controlled PM of the largest democracy in the world for 10 long years, never having to face the rough and tumble of electoral battles that all politicians routinely face. He was perhaps the only PM who was never a member or the leader of the House in Lok Sabha, as he was conveniently nominated to Rajya Sabha (from Assam) all the time. He continued in Rajya Sabha till April 2024, ie 10 years even after his premiership. Indeed, very few people are as lucky as him.

A lifelong bureaucrat, Dr. Singh held the highest positions of the land; he was among the first lateral entrants into bureaucracy as he was hired as an Advisor in the Ministry of Foreign Trade during 1969-70 after he completed his doctorate in economics from Oxford University and did a stint with UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). Dr Singh held several key posts at the highest levels, he was Chief Economic Advisor between 1972-76, Secretary of the Finance Ministry after 1976, Governor of the Reserve Bank during 1982-86, and Head of the Planning Commission during 1985-87. He then moved to Geneva, Switzerland from 1987-1990 as a Secretary General to a think-tank South Commission. When India was close to default in 1990, he was once again made Advisor to PM in the Chandrashekhar govt, and soon after he was made Chairman of the University Grants Commission in 1991. There probably is no other bureaucrat who held so many positions in the central govt. In other words, Dr Singh was very much instrumental in systematically instituting the Nehruvian socialist licence-raj system. It is said that during his tenure as CEA, inflation hit the roof at 29% in 1974. Ironically he is credited with dismantling the very system that he has painstakingly built which completely suppressed the economic freedom, innovation, and entrepreneurship of people.

As a pinnacle of this highly career-oriented bureaucrat, he was made Finance Minister in 1991 by Prime Minister P V Narasimha Rao, allegedly as a part of the essential package of LPG (Liberalization, Privatization, Globalization) of IMF. India’s Balance of Payments and Current account deficit was perilously close to bankruptcy and India’s foreign reserves were just 1 Billion $USD. While PM P V Narasimha Rao unveiled the economic liberalization policies managing the entire political fallout, the Congress party gave credit to Manmohan Singh due to its pathological hatred for PV, who refused to bend to Congress High Command beyond a point. Even in that financially perilous position, FM Manmohan Singh didn’t forget to pay his tribute to Sonia Gandhi in the form of giving a generous grant of Rs 100 crores to the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation, which itself was formed in record time. The same Dr. Manmohan Singh who paid lip service to his Guru PV didn’t even allow or conduct the last rites of former PM, P V Narasimha Rao in Delhi after his demise in December 2004. The then Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y S Rajasekhar Reddy, a close confidante of Sonia Gandhi in driving many other agendas, was roped in to convince PV’s family to conduct the funeral in Hyderabad. It is important to note that P V Narasimha Rao, an old fragile man in a wheelchair who was undergoing regular dialysis was made to travel from court to court in the many false cases that the administration has foisted against him. In the present scenario, the nation has seen how graciously the Narendra Modi Govt conducted D.r Manmohan Singh’s last rites in Delhi with full state honors.

The never-elected Dr. Manmohan Singh’s (2004-2014) ten-year term as Prime Minister of the world’s largest democracy is nothing less than disastrous, ridden with a series of scams, and huge corruption scandals involving his cabinet colleagues; he himself was heading the Coal Ministry when coal block scam broke out, with the accused asking in the court how the Coal Minister was not responsible for the scam if the Secretary is named in the scam. The approximate total amount of corruption and scams in the ten years is estimated at a minimum of Rs.15 lakh crores, some put the figure at Rs.20 lakh crores. This is the legacy of the `economist’ PM who led the country to a financial brink landing it in the `Fragile Five’ countries. Experts also point out that the higher growth rates between 2004-08 are due to the growth policies adopted by the Atal Behari Vajpayee Govt until 2004.

Another great legacy of the MMS govt is its legendary policy paralysis, there was no reform, and no implementation of any worthwhile policies in his long tenure. All the progressive policies cleared by the Vajpayee Govt like GST etc were put in cold storage, and Farm laws, Labor laws, etc were non-starters. Each ministry was busy making money, especially the Defense Ministry which was always inundated with lobbyists and middlemen, and many corruption scams like Augusta Westland, etc broke out. 2 G, Coal scam, etc brought notoriety in the entire world and any potential foreign investor backed out. For the second time in his 60-year-long career, Dr. Manmohan Singh successfully pushed India into financial peril, India was in the `Fragile Five’ when he quit as PM in 2014. Inflation reached double digits and a high of 13%, and the Black economy was flourishing especially in Real estate, gems, jewellery, commodities, etc. Hawala operations were at their peak, fake counterfeit money was being printed and unleashed in the Indian markets. FM Chidambaram famous for his 80-20 gold import scheme introduced before the 2014 elections benefited many private gold and jewelry companies; many such companies were exposed during Modi Govt’s 2017 Demonetization scheme. It is equally pathetic that Modi Govt didn’t prosecute any of these economic offenders in the last ten years.

Reams have been written about Dr. MMS’s govt taking administrative directions from the Sonia Gandhi headed National Advisory Council, and the capture of power by the Congress-left cabal. Dr Singh who threatened to quit if the US-Nuclear deal didn’t happen, had no such qualms of conscience when the country was being looted and plundered. His many inactions on Hindu civilizational and cultural issues are downright pathetic, it comes close to being called out as Hindu Mesia. Whether it was the arrest of the much revered Kanchi Shankaracharya in 2004, the active negation of the Ayodhya Ram Mandir issue by his party and the Govt, the rampant conversions being supported and indulged by the Govt of Andhra Pradesh headed by Y S Rajasekhar Reddy, the creation of Christian Minority Finance Corporation by YSR, Dr. Singh had no answers. Very few people remember that the Ministry of Minority Affairs itself was carved out by the Manmohan Singh Govt in 2006, no one asked any questions as to why there should be a separate ministry for `minorities’ in a democratic country. Dr. Singh not only passed the notorious Waqf Amendment Laws in 2013, but he also launched a National Waqf Development Corporation in early 2014 and proclaimed that UPA is committed to promoting the interests of minorities, the Union Minister Rahman Khan said that NAWADCO is the first step to create Shariah-compliant Infrastructure. It is perhaps with this motive that Dr. Singh took the decision in the cabinet and gave away 123 prime properties in Lutyens Connaught Place, Ashoka Road, etc to the Waqf Board in 2014 just before the Lok Sabha elections. 61 of these properties were owned by the Land & Development office and the remaining were with the Delhi Development Authority (DDA).

As far as the national and internal security issues are concerned, hopefully, no other future PM of India will emulate Dr Singh’s unbeatable record or even come close to it. There was no single year during his ten-year tenure when major terror blasts didn’t occur- Delhi, Ahmedabad, Varanasi, Mumbai, Malegaon, Samjhauta Express, Hyderabad, Ajmer, Lucknow, Varanasi, Kanpur, Jaipur, Maharashtra train blasts, Mumbai attacks, Agartala, Guwahati, Dantewada, Delhi, Pune, Bengaluru, Srinagar, Bodhgaya, Patna, Jalpaiguri etc. Known terrorist Yasin Malik was heartily welcomed into his office in 2006. Many jihadis of SIMI etc have undergone Narco tests, then telecast on national TV, yet Govt agencies didn’t conclude any terror cases. Except for sending useless dossiers to Pakistan, Dr Singh never pursued or prosecuted any case to its logical conclusion successfully, whether cases of corruption or terror attacks against the nation. It was alleged that many LeT-affiliated terrorists had been allowed a free escape to Pakistan under the illustrious leadership of the then Home Ministers and the then Prime Minister Dr. Singh. Hundreds of innocent Indians were killed in terror attacks, surely Indian people have not forgotten the reign of terror. The only foreign policy that Dr Singh followed was the `look away’ policy; former Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran, who was chairman of the National Security Advisory Board had admitted in 2013 that China occupied 640 sq. km of Indian territory in Ladakh through its salami-slicing approach.

It is a marvel that despite such an amazing unparalleled record, Indians and especially Indian media eulogized that an academic, soft-spoken economist PM has died. Perhaps national development and national security don’t really matter to Indians. One of the most enduring images is the absence of former PM Dr. Manmohan Singh from the August podium of the Parliament House during the midnight launch of GST in June 2017 in the first NDA term of Prime Minister Modi, even as another former PM Sri Deve Gowda attended it. The then Finance Minister Late Arun Jaitley personally invited Dr Singh, but characteristically Dr. Singh chose His Master’s Voice above that of the national interest. Certainly, there can be no parallel to the late Dr. Singh.

Note:
1. Text in Blue points to additional data on the topic.
2. The views expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily represent or reflect the views of PGurus.

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