Dr Manmohan Singh, the most gentleman politician, a genius economist and two time Prime Minister of India has passed away. Condolences are coming from all over and even from his ardent opponents. Even in Jammu and Kashmir, particularly from Kashmir Valley, besides politicians from different ideological backgrounds, the common people are taking to social media platforms to mourn the demise of the most humble, polite, no-non-sense and most decisive politician of the nation. Those who termed him “Weak and Remote-controlled, have been shying away from the reality that he proved his decisiveness both as Finance Minister and Prime Minister.
As Finance Minister, in 1991, Singh abolished the Licence Raj, source of slow economic growth and corruption in the Indian economy for decades and liberalised the Indian economy, allowing it to speed up development dramatically. During his term as prime minister, Singh continued to encourage growth in the Indian market, enjoying widespread success in these matters. It was during his tenure as PM when Indian economy grew with an 8–9% economic growth rate.
As Prime Minister, he decisively handled the Indo-U.S. nuclear deal. Risking the very survival of his government, he single-handedly turned the tables on the Left parties — providing outside support to the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance — by securing the support of Samajwadi Party (SP) in a crucial trust vote in July 2008 over the India-U.S. nuclear deal.
He was a statesman, a great economist with highest degree of integrity. His initiatives vis-à-vis Jammu and Kashmir were both bold as well as nationalistic and people friendly. In 2006, he constituted five working groups on Jammu and Kashmir to grab the initiative for ushering in a phase of development by creating conditions of permanent peace in the troubled state. The groups were tasked to come up with suggestions that would help restore peace in the region and better the lives of the people. The groups had submitted their recommendations and had these been followed in letter and spirit, no August 5, 2019 may have taken place because the recommendations had taken care of all the apprehensions that BJP and other such groups had been voicing about the continuation of Article 370.
However, nothing of the sort happened as Dr Singh’s government was surrounded by so many alleged scandals and scams and an anticorruption movement was launched nationwide to stain the Mr Clean image of Dr Singh. Things were not so good within his own party too. Mainstream media too had found a soft target who was a doer not a talker. In January 2014, addressing his last press conference as Prime Minister, Dr. Singh said, “I honestly believe that history will be kinder to me than the contemporary media, or for that matter, the Opposition parties in Parliament.” Yes, history will be kinder to him because he, both as Finance Minister and as Prime Minister had proved a messiah to the poor, and in India, poor are still in abundance.