He was the unflinching patriot, the humble knowledge seeker, the thoughtful opinion maker, the constant guardian of people’s welfare, and the perennial nation-builder.
Praveen Chakravarty
December 27, 2024
In this Jan. 17, 2014 image shows the then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Congress party president Sonia Gandhi and party vice president Rahul Gandhi during AICC meeting in New Delhi. | Photo Credit: PTI
Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s life reads like the ultimate dream. Rising from humble beginnings to a glittering resume replete with degrees from the world’s best universities, positions of the highest office in public life, global fame and repute, and feted with every coveted award.
A tribute to his legacy would inevitably include a long list of the positions of power and responsibilities he held and his stunning professional accomplishments. In the modern meritocratic era of credentials and positions, his dazzling array of achievements would be Dr. Singh’s (as I called him) defining legacy.
But in my view, his defining legacy is to illuminate a virtuous path to extraordinary success in the harsh and treacherous terrain of politics and public service. His whole life is a standout exception to the belief that one has to necessarily sacrifice principles of probity, integrity, sincerity, loyalty, and humility to succeed in politics. His true legacy is about what he was not – the typically duplicitous, virtueless, self-obsessed political leader that is successful. His enormously successful pursuit of the politics of purpose and principles offers tantalising hope and inspiration to millions of idealistic youth to enter public life and dedicate themselves to nation-building. This is perhaps the legacy that Dr. Singh himself would have been proud to leave behind for the nation that he loved so dearly.
I am very fortunate to have been the recipient of Dr. Singh’s fondness for well over a decade. Over the past few years, as Dr. Singh became physically weaker, rendering him unable to venture much outside, his graceful wife, Gursharan Kaur, would tell me to visit regularly and “engage him intellectually”. I visited him nearly every month for the past five years and interacted with him closely, including writing some articles for this paper. During these interactions, I learned copiously from and about him. I am shattered that it is now time to write his obituary and distraught that I am stuck outside India, unable to bid my last goodbye to him.
Perennial nation-builder
Even in the private confines of his living room, Dr. Singh was scrupulously polite, warm, thoughtful, and modest. He may have been the wise sage to the external world but his curiosity for new information and learning was boundless. In the long years that I have known him closely, not once was there a semblance of even an intent to lecture or sermonise from a bully pulpit, a trait that typically plagues most accomplished people. I watched with amazement on the day after demonetisation in 2016, how despite being a former Prime Minister, Finance Minister and RBI Governor, he sought information from junior RBI officers to senior former Ministers and only after that he formed his opinion on the move. He was so deeply concerned about its deleterious impact on the poor that he felt he owed it to the people to warn the government, through an uncharacteristically strong speech in Parliament and an article in this paper, which then set the tone for the nation’s response and actions. This was quintessential Dr. Singh — the unflinching patriot, the humble knowledge seeker, the thoughtful opinion maker, the constant guardian of people’s welfare, and the perennial nation-builder.
Dr. Singh’s devotion to his duty was simply mind-boggling. In the past two years, when his health was frail and he was wheelchair-bound, he still insisted on being taken to the Congress party office to cast his vote in the Congress presidential election in 2022 and in the next year, to Parliament to fulfil his duties as an MP to cast a vote on behalf of the Opposition, both of which were neither crucial nor compulsory.
History will rightfully count Dr. Singh as a founding father of modern India. He acutely understood that building a nation like ours, with its enormous complexities and contradictions, is necessarily a political project of consensus-building on a foundation of strong institutions. His inclusive growth paradigm of economic development and a rights-based social welfare framework continue to be the twin pillars of India’s governance model regardless of which government is in power.
At the same time, Dr. Singh had a Keynesian philosophy to changing his mind when presented with new credible information. When I met him last in October, he discussed the shifting political landscape in many nations caused by free trade and its attendant impact on people and seemed open to changing his previous doctrinaire position on the benefits of free trade. It takes the sagacity, curiosity, and humility of someone like Dr. Singh to yearn for new information, process it, and alter their views, in the twilight of their hugely successful life.
‘Be attached to purpose’
Dr. Singh’s greatest challenge was navigating the mines of India’s and the Congress party’s politics. But he believed strongly in the medium of politics for nation-building, however harsh and rough it may be. While his contributions to governance and policy are both legendary and highly lauded, it was his outlook on politics that was the most endearing to me. There have been reams written about the 1991 economic reforms that he championed as India’s Finance Minister and the enormous foreign policy successes that he achieved as Prime Minister. But as he often said, those were possible only because he had his resignation letter handy, ready to sacrifice power if the cause was not right. He was able to effect dramatic turns in India’s governance landscape, not only due to his intellectual heft but also through the power of his integrity and righteousness. “Be detached to power and attached to purpose,” he would often tell me.
Dr. Singh will surely fill many chapters of history books in India and the world. There will be abundant information on his governance achievements and the course of the nation under his stewardship. But the true legacy of Dr. Singh, as he may have preferred, would be to inspire and motivate young people to enter public life and uphold the highest ideals in service to the nation. His life story is about how in the desert of political cynicism there can be a flowing oasis. That it is possible to uphold the highest principles and still succeed in public life. At a time when devious, demagogic politics is hailed as ‘Chanakyan’, when the pursuit of power has supplanted all decency and decorum in public life, when showmanship trumps workmanship, one wonders if the era of the politics of sincerity, humility, integrity and service will also end with Dr. Manmohan Singh’s passing. I pray not, and so will Dr. Singh.
Praveen Chakravarty is Chairman, All India Professionals’ Congress
Published – December 27, 2024 09:00 pm IST