Dr Manmohan Singh’s career has been exceptional and extraordinarily consequential. What is less well known is Dr Singh as a person.

Dr Manmohan Singh was soft-spoken and scholarly. He was also an extremely hard worker, and whatever his stress, he always kept his cool. He encouraged others to brief him and valued those briefings. However late he slept, by morning, he always turned up at work fresh.

In 1991, India was fortunate that Dr Manmohan Singh became finance minister since he was closely involved with the policies in the past and was best equipped to appreciate what had been done in managing to survive the Asian crisis. He had the knowledge and experience to carry forward on the path to restore confidence, provide appropriate credibility to what was done, and, above all, bring about a paradigm shift in the public discourse on development economics. During his tenure, India’s path to liberalisation was firmly set. He was required to evolve a new framework that should govern our policies. For this, he built a team he could trust. I was fortunate to be on his team.

He was also a deeply empathetic person. When I called upon him on my appointment as governor of the RBI, he, having been a former RBI Governor, said, ‘The governor’s job is perhaps the loneliest job in the country.’ He was very right. As Prime Minister, he gave me free access to meet him and invariably listened with full attention and respect. As many would agree, he will be remembered in history as a legend of Indian economic policy and statecraft.

Y. Venugopal Reddy, former Governor of the Reserve Bank of India

Published on December 27, 2024