Ex-minister dies at 92
Manmohan Singh, the former Indian prime minister whose economic reforms made his country a global powerhouse, has died at the age of 92, current leader Narendra Modi said.
Modi confirmed Singh’s death, posting on X that India “mourns the loss of one of its most distinguished leaders.”
Singh was taken to a hospital in New Delhi after he lost consciousness at his home on Thursday, but could not be resuscitated and was pronounced dead at 9:51 pm local time, according to a statement by the All India Institute of Medical Sciences.
Singh, who held office from 2004 to 2014, is credited with having overseen an economic boom in Asia’s fourth-largest economy in his first term, although slowing growth in later years marred his second stint.
Born in 1932 in the mud-house village of Gah in what is now Pakistan, Singh studied economics to find a way to eradicate poverty in the vast nation and never held elected office before taking the nation’s highest office.
He won scholarships to attend both Cambridge, where he obtained a first in economics, and Oxford, where he completed his PhD.
Singh worked in a string of senior civil posts, served as a central bank governor, and also held various jobs with global agencies such as the United Nations.
He was tapped in 1991 by then Congress prime minister P.V. Narasimha Rao to reel India back from the worst financial crisis in its modern history.
In his first term, Singh steered the economy through a period of nine-percent growth, lending the country the international clout it had long sought.
He also sealed a landmark nuclear deal with the US that he said would help India meet its growing energy needs.
Known as “Mr. Clean”, Singh nonetheless saw his image tarnished during his decade-long tenure when a series of corruption cases became public.
Several months before the 2014 elections, Singh said he would retire after the polls, with Sonia Gandhi’s son Rahul earmarked to take his place if Congress won.
But Congress crashed to its worst-ever result at that time as the Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, led by Modi, won a landslide.
Singh — who said historians would be kinder to him than contemporary detractors — became a vocal critic of Modi’s economic policies, and more recently warned about the risks that rising communal tensions posed to India’s democracy.
AFP
