The Three Avatars of Dr. Manmohan Singh: A Retrospective
With the recent passing of Dr. Manmohan Singh, we look back at his achievements
In this edition of The Core Report, financial journalist Govindraj Ethiraj is joined by AK Bhattacharya, Editorial Director at the Business Standard and Shankkar Aiyar veteran economic journalist and author, to look back on the life and times of Dr. Manmohan Singh and his contributions in his various roles as RBI Governor, Finance Minister and Prime Minister of India. Taking a holistic view of his life and impact, they talk about his achievements through the crisis of 1991 and the reforms that transformed India’s economy, how his tenure as Prime Minister established a slew of rights-based policies but was also mired by inefficiency and accusations of corruption, and much more.
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Govindraj Ethiraj: Hello and welcome to this special Core Report. Manmohan Singh, former Prime Minister and Finance Minister of India, died on the 26th of December in New Delhi. Dr. Manmohan Singh was born in September 1932. He was an Indian economist and politician who served, as we know, as Prime Minister of India from 2004 to 2014, and earlier as the Finance Minister of India. Dr. Singh had a brilliant academic record right from school onwards till Punjab University in Chandigarh, and then later University of Cambridge in Great Britain, and then on to earning a Doctorate of Economics from the University of Oxford, and then subsequently held a series of positions in the government of India, in India, as well as outside India. Manmohanomics was the term that many used to define his brand of economics and his approach to economic issues and challenges.
How would that work today, and how could we contrast his approach to economic challenges of the 90s, and how would they pan out in today's economic context once again? So, to discuss that in some detail, I'm joined by Ashok K. Bhattacharya, Editorial Director of Business Standard, and also by Shankar Rai, a veteran economic journalist and author.
Both of them have met with, interacted and interviewed Dr. Manmohan Singh many times over the years and have fond memories and interesting anecdotes to which we'll come to as well. So, Shankar, it's over to you. Tell us about the 1991 story where you wrote about the 21,000 kilogrammes of gold that were being secretly airlifted.
What that meant and what that led to?
Shankkar Aiyar: Well, I mean, you know, I had just come back from Bangalore and somebody called me and said that you should go to the airport. So, I asked for some more details. And that person, till today I suspect who it was, but that person hasn't confirmed.
So, it's like a source told me about this large cargo being in it. So, when I went to the airport, I saw this huge cargo aircraft and then I saw the RBI vans and all. And, you know, after five hours of tottering around the airport and the customs enclosure and sort of sneaking past guards and all, I found out that it was gold.
And then I got the destination from the air traffic control pretending to be someone, I mean, they thought I was from RBI. So, they happily told me the destination and everything. So, once the story was published, all hell broke loose and, you know, RBI had a press conference, parliament had a session at that time and all.
Some days after the story was published, Manmohan Singh came to Mumbai, hosted by Murali Devra at a lunch at CCI. And typically as Murali Devra would have it, he said, Yeh badmash hai jisne wo story likha and introduced me to Dr. Manmohan Singh. So, Dr. Manmohan Singh asked me a very simple question. He said, Are you against reforms? So, I said, No, sir. This is a story that I would have done anyway.
So, I said, Why would you say that? And what was your reaction? Were you upset when the story came?
So, he said, You know, your story crystallised or brought the attention of the nation on the grave crisis that we faced. And so, in a way, it turned out to be a boon, which was something amazing. I mean, normally politicians are pretty upset about something being exposed.
So, he said, Your exposé brought the attention of the nation to that story. And he was in touch with me for some time over various issues. The points that followed, which is the partial convertibility of the rupee, which again I had broken and I had done that story while in Indian Express.
And whenever I would meet him, there would never be a mention about all the mischief, as he called it, that I was up to. But he would explain things, why trade convertibility will precede capital account convertibility and some of these conversations. You got to learn a lot.
I think that everything that this government is boasting about now or India boasts about now, we have the world's largest rural job employment, social security scheme. We have the world's largest food security scheme. We have the world's largest biometric identity system.
We have the world's largest cash transfer system. All of these were inducted during his tenure as Prime Minister, particularly in the first five years, six years of his tenure. So, it is in some ways, I would say in his first tenure, he was more like FDR and more like the creator of the New Deal.
Now, they may not have come in sort of consonance, in a flow, in a sequence. They might have come under pressure, the political pressure that he faced. And each of these steps today stands India in great stead in whatever crisis that we face.
And the most important thing, where it mattered, he stood for, so I call him a patriot, a professional and a politician. A patriot because he fought all odds to have the nuclear deal done. I think some of his own party, the high command were not completely convinced about the idea of the nuclear deal, but that was a tremendous achievement.
Govindraj Ethiraj: AKB, you've written a very exhaustive article on Friday in Business Standard, where you've traced his very impressive arc from 1971 till 2014, through his various positions, some of which, and I'm sure many of which most people may not even know about. The fact, for example, that he was Secretary General of the South Commission in Geneva. He was Economic Advisor in Ministry of Trade.
The fact that trade itself was an important grounding for him, which may obviously have helped him look at or rather shape his policy or his approach to policy. So, if you were to look at the three or four key things he did in 1991, around the time or just after Shankar's story was published and it became clear that India was already facing a crisis. So, he did three or four things.
He devalued the currency 18% in two instalments. He liberalised the licencing policy for everything except 18 sectors. He removed restrictions of growth.
India had this amazing thing that you could not grow unless you got a licence to do so. And he also tried to, or he started the process of reducing BSU or public sector enterprises or state-owned enterprises monopoly. And then he also worked on the tax regime and he started bringing it down, company regime, customs duty and so on and so forth.
So, if you were to look at the sum total of all these moves and then start looking forward, what would you say, and I'll have several questions but let me ask you the first one. How would you define the way he looked at this whole thing as the problem statement? I mean, what to him was the problem statement?
And maybe Shankar referred to it indirectly when he talked about, you know, do you want reform or not? And how did he, I mean, in his thinking or in his thought process, define his solutions to the problem statement? And we'll try and use that as we go along even to maybe our contemporary issues.
I know I look at Manmohan Singh in three different avatars.
AK Bhattacharya: The first avatar is from 1971 to 1991. The second avatar is 1991 to 1996. The third avatar is from 2004 to 2014.
And in the third avatar, he has got two incarnations, if I may use that expression. Now, in the first avatar, what he does is that he actually plays the role that the government of that time was actually wanting him to play in a sense that even though his PhD thesis in Oxford was about export liberalisation, he was actually part of a system wherein controls were very much in vogue and he could do little to unshackle the economy in the 1970s and the 1980s till India got into that crisis. He even to a point that Manmohan Singh in his first avatar was actually advising the RBI that how RBI's autonomy is eventually defined by the government of India. But the same Manmohan Singh when he goes to RBI, he talks about why government should decide on what is the foreign investor norm.
And he loses that case in the Supreme Court. So, the first avatar is a Manmohan who is young, who is an economist, but he does not have that, I would say, either over the body politic as well as the overall opinion in that time, in that era was not supporting his cause. His last stint in the first avatar is that as the South Commission Secretary General, wherein he laid the foundations of what is today's, you know, Shankar talked about what all has he did is today's is that he first laid the foundation of South-South cooperation.
Now, today the talk about Global South is actually he laid the foundation in 1991, 1990 his report. Now, that is the first avatar. The second avatar is actually what you gave in detail is that of a finance minister who is responding to an unprecedented crisis on the fisc as well as in the balance of payments.
Now, and that's what Shankar referred to as a gold being mortgaged, and then you talked about devaluation, the de-licencing, public sector monopoly being broken, and then he did the financial sector liberalisation, he brought in the banking sector liberalisation, he talked about the ad hoc treasury bills, but the government's way of financing its deficit was not through the stopped all that. Now, that is the second avatar, where he was the reformer minister, he was a reformist to the court, where he was playing the role of a liberaliser, and I think it was in response to a crisis. Once the crisis dissipated, crisis was getting over, I think his overall enthusiasm about reform was on the vein.
Now, the third avatar was in 2004, when he becomes a prime minister, and he actually very effectively rolls out all the rights based policies, whether it is the right to work, whether it is right to information, or whether it is right to food. Now, right to food came later in 2013, in his second stint, but the first stint he started the work also on the biometrics based identity system, which will become the benchmark for your all benefit transfer scheme. But his third avatar also saw how he, in his second stint, he allowed the economy to go downhill.
The government's fiscal deficit was on a decline, inflation, retail inflation, out of those five years, out of four years, were in double digits, retail inflation, in that second stint of his third avatar. And of course, the charges of corruption levelled against his government, but I don't think he could do very much there. So, if you have to look at Manmohan Singh, it is impossible to define him only as a prime minister, or as a finance minister, or as a technocrat in the ministries of commerce and finance, and a little bit on the RBI.
So therefore, when I look at Manmohan Singh, I'm a little, I would say, not confused, but I start wondering, which Manmohan Singh should I actually look at? The first avatar, the second avatar, the third avatar. I think the defining Manmohan Singh is in his second avatar, where he was in his true elements, where he could do things.
And I have a theory of why he could do things then, and why he could not do things in his third avatar, that we can come later.
Govindraj Ethiraj: Right. That does lead me to a question referring to what you talked about, the waning of interest in reform. Is that something that was peculiar to Manmohan Singh?
Is that a imprimatur of most governments in India that, you know, they do not respond unless in crisis, which has also become like a urban legend?
AK Bhattacharya: What happens in the Indian political economy is this, that the crisis induces the best reforms. And I think when the crisis was over, I think the demand for reforms was also on the wane. So, when 2004, all boats in the world were rising, an Indian boat was also rising.
So, there was no demand for reforms. You could use the government resources to introduce one after another rights-based policies at the cost of the exchequer. Even the National Food Security Act of 2013 meant a lot of government money.
So, therefore, the reforms happened because there was a need for it. If you hadn't done those reforms, the country would have just collapsed, the economy would have collapsed. So, my theory is Manmohan Singh, in his second Aftar, thrived because there was a crisis and because he believed and he knew that, after all, designing his reforms may be a matter of science, but he also knew that implementing that reform is a matter of art.
So, he knew how to give and take, how he will raise fertiliser prices by 35%, then bring it down by 18%, and yet he would have raised fertiliser prices. So, he understood this give and take business. So, like he, you know, his conversation with Shankar, it tells you about what kind of a reformer he was.
He understood the Indian political economy so well.
Govindraj Ethiraj: Shankar, if you want to pick up on that and start moving forward, chronologically that is, you know, he believed in gradualism. He was a proponent of gradualism. Would you say that by 2014 and onwards, it remained gradualism?
Had it slipped further back to something else? How do you see it?
Shankkar Aiyar: So, before that, I just wanted to make one point and I like the framing that AKB did about the three Avatars. I mean, you know, in the 1991 period, he was surrounded by the best minds of India, you know, Montek and why we read D. Venkatraman and all that.
And he drew upon that strength. When he became the Prime Minister, he was surrounded by bright people who were aspiring to take over from him. But he was a Democrat, so he allowed and the party functioned a lot.
In the third Avatar, I think he allowed people to tell him what he wanted to hear, which is where I think that, I mean, this is personal, I think that somewhere in 2009, after his health sort of started petering, he should have stepped off. He would have had a much better legacy. Somebody like Pranab Da, who would have taken over from him, may have dealt with the politics of that time better.
But to come to what you're saying, you know, 1991, he could bring the economy back from the brink because, A, there was a crisis, B, he had Narsimha Rao. And Narsimha Rao was the industries minister who dismantled the licence laws. He kept the industry ministry with him.
Now, when we look at it, what's happening is that you have a Prime Minister who's a great communicator, who wants to do something, who has panchang for slogans, for acronyms and sort of wants to have a more digital economy and everything. But the team around him is nowhere near that. So, the gravitas that was there in the earlier era, in terms of the bureaucracy, in terms of the ministers, that gravitas is not that good.
I will see who are the best performing ministers. Nitin Gadkari sort of pops out. Okay.
And then Ashwini Vaishnav. There are two or three people who are doing their stuff. The other thing that's happening here is that this is a government that is largely centralised.
Always in government, anywhere in the world, if you see, you either need a crisis and the force of change depends on the magnitude of crisis. As the force of the magnitude of crisis sort of recedes, the force of change goes to sleep. So, here what is we are facing today when we see a 5.4% GDP growth, the general narrative that they are building around it is that it is just one-off, that there were rains, that there were this and they're treating 7% as the ceiling of GDP growth, whereas India's demographic character requires 7% as the floor for GDP growth. Otherwise, you know, you won't create jobs, you won't be able to do things. So, there is the consensus-based approach of Hajpayee. There is the intellectual-based approach of Manmohan Singh and definitely he failed in one big area where he couldn't stop the retrospective tax issue.
But in Modi's tenure, his ability to take one project and run with it like rural electrification or Jan Dhan Yojana or the expansion of Aadhaar is there. But at the same time, the same Prime Minister and the party cannot convince 12 or 13 states where they rule to adopt the labour code which is so important for job creation to sort of adopt a new mechanism for forward and backward linkages for agriculture. All of this shows the difference and in a sense, I think that we are somewhere in a very structural situation which the government has to sort of come to terms with maybe next quarter or the quarter of that and Uncle Trump will do the necessary crisis induction.
Govindraj Ethiraj: Just one more quick point, Shankar. So, I'm picking up on what AKB said. So, if I took away that, he said that his final feelings were mixed or confused about Manmohan Singh through those three Aadhaars.
How are you seeing it? And really what I'm trying to draw from this is, what is India's sort of economic institutional response to situations and or can it show true leadership again economically? So, is our policy going to be a set of responses to a set of problems, big or small?
Or are we, even as we are today, I mean as we stand today, demonstrating true leadership? But that's the question that I'll try and build towards. But what are your feelings, firstly?
Shankkar Aiyar: Dr. Singh was always an appointee and in his... He's the most appointed person in India, literally. And in the Prime Minister's Aadhaar, the first five years, he brought together his technocratic experience and he was, mind you, an underrated politician in a sense that he understood politics very well.
He had seen all the players. And so he was able to bridge the ideas together. To answer your Aadhaar question, I think we as a country are sort of, if all said and done, much remains to be done.
So that is our general description. And if you look at issues like administrative reforms, agriculture, all of these issues are pending because nobody has championed those issues, nobody has taken or there hasn't been a major, major crisis around it. So our policies have been largely reactive rather than reflective, rather than proactive.
I mean, you take any sector in the country, all the policies are reactive.
Govindraj Ethiraj: AKP, so if you were to now drill down, since Shankar has already helped us do that, again to go back to 1991, he devalued the currency, he liberalised the licencing policy, he removed restrictions, MRTP or the Monopolies Restricted Trade Practises Act and PSU, public sector units, and then taxation. Which of these now do you feel has moved forward suitably because we are now almost 35 years down the line, in a way that would demonstrate that we've used this time or the passage of time well and demonstrated economic leadership? Or are we still broadly and foundationally still stuck close to where Dr. Singh left it then?
AK Bhattacharya: Well, you know, there's a very important question that you have raised, Govind. I think what has happened in the last four, five years, I do see a slide back of sorts, a slide back particularly on our trade policy. In a sense that in spite of promises of a kind of a, you know, a calibrated review of customs duty reduction or review that has been promised in the last few years, we are yet to see the result of those calibrated reviews.
So, we did see from 2018 onwards, the taxes, you know, that the customs duty, the average peak tariff of custom duty in 1991 was around 400 percent and above. Now, that over the period of 20 years or so, they had come down to 10 percent, which is what was coming closer to the East Asian countries tariffs. Now, you see a trend that 2017-18 onwards, you see those average peak tariffs are gradually going up.
So, there is a sense that the domestic industry needs some sort of a protection to do well. Now, that to my mind is a slide back. But on other fronts, I would say that economic reforms have maintained the same direction.
The only one proviso, the qualification I will make is that for all his brave policies in 1991 to 1996, Manmohan Singh, given the state of the Indian economy and its policies, was actually plucking the low-hanging fruit. In terms of the economic policy framework, liberalising, there were difficult decisions, there were bold decisions, but at the same time, they were low-hanging fruit in India's political economy, which did not really require state involvement. Now, in the factor market reforms, I think these were the difficult reforms that were left undone, unreformed.
Now, remember that Manmohan Singh announced an exit policy as the finance minister, but he went back on it because he realised that exit policy for labour is just not acceptable. And he actually, he beat a hasty retreat. And so, his argument was that you have created an exit for industry, you need to create an exit for labour as well.
So, Manmohan Singh in his second avatar, he plucked the low-hanging fruit. And in 2004 to 2014, I don't think he showed that stamina or the appetite for going deeper into those factor market reforms or whether it is land. On the contrary, on land, he went back.
His land acquisition policy was actually a retrograde step in terms of industrialisation. His labour policy, he did not move at all. On agriculture, he did not do anything.
On the contrary, it is the Modi government which has tried to move on with the land, labour and agriculture. But once again, given the nature, the fraught nature of India's political economy and being a federal structure and where the states have a lot of say, except GST, and that too a flawed GST in my view, you have nothing you have seen of reform, which is a real reform involving states. So, what Manmohan Singh achieved in his second avatar, he did not achieve in his third avatar, except those rights-based policies and the Aadhaar, the cash benefit transfer scheme, the health insurance scheme for all, you had the National Food Security Act of 2013.
So, all that has happened. And just in response to what Shankar said, that the Vodafone tax was a classic example of one of the weaknesses of Manmohan Singh in his third avatar. You know, in Manmohan Singh's second avatar, was the master of ceremony as far as recruiting his team was concerned.
He built a personally handpicked team in Montech, in Reddy, in Shankar Acharya, and even Ashok Desai for a short while. But he did not show that element of his ability to pick his team. On the contrary, he became a good prime minister, a prime minister who would allow his cabinet ministers to decide not only on what needs to be done, but also pick their own secretaries.
I'm aware of cases where a minister would veto a recommendation of a secretary made by the prime minister in prime minister's third avatar, Manmohan Singh's third avatar. Now, this is exactly the problem that arose on the Vodafone tax, where Pranab Gauji was very keen on introducing that retrospective tax. But the prime minister asked him, he was not in favour of it.
He asked him that, do you want to go ahead and do it? Now, Pranab Gauji said that, if I don't do it, then there will be lot many more cases to which the prime minister said, okay, if you think it is good, go ahead and do it. So, he was being a good prime minister.
He allowed his finance ministry to perform and operate. Now, was he being really a good prime minister? I will keep my words, you know.
Govindraj Ethiraj: Right. And I'm going to come to some personal anecdotes from both of you in a I think from your article again, AKB, that when Manmohan Singh was Reserve Bank of India governor, Pranab Mukherjee was the finance minister and his boss. And later on, the equation reversed to the point that you were just referring to where Pranab Mukherjee was, or rather, he was Pranab Mukherjee's boss as the prime minister.
So, there could be obviously more to it, but that's not something we'll go into today. Shankar, an important aspect of what Manmohan Singh did in was the reaction of industry. So, if you remember the Bombay club, I mean, we all remember the Bombay club and industry was upset because one swoop duties were being brought down, no licencing was being removed because that was obviously all of this also worked to the advantage of many businesses.
My question, however, is this, the courage that if you want to call it that, that he demonstrated at that point in taking on both people in the political space, but also people in the business space, have you seen that subsequently? And do you think that business operates in the same business and politics or politicians, particularly let's say finance minister, prime minister, operate in the same level of, let's say, I don't know, balance, if you want to call it. I mean, whichever way you define balance as it used to be then.
Shankkar Aiyar: Well, he was supported by an armada that was Narsimha Rao. I mean, Narsimha Rao was a polymath. He was extraterrestrial in his ability to manage different weaknesses.
I mean, he thrived on vulnerabilities of people and parties and all. It was a different, I mean, you know, we can't compare any other prime minister with that kind of thing. And then there was Vajpayee who had such a big stature.
I remember when the VSNL privatisation happened, almost everybody around the table said no. And Mr. Vajpayee simply said, that's how it got privatised. I mean, you know, he had that kind of stature.
In a different way, while the ability to deal with the smaller constituency of corporates and companies and the interests of the financial world, prime ministers have been plus and minus, but no prime minister has been able to take on the might of the state government. See, N. T.
Ramarao used to say, every inch, the centre is a conceptual myth and that every inch of India is ruled by the states. So, any subject that is under the state domain education, health, land, local taxes, in terms of labour code, no prime minister has found the courage to sort of deal with, because that is real Schumpeterian politics. You know, if somebody who is as powerful, as almighty as Narendra Modi has sort of shied away from some of this big, you know, twice he tried to reform once the Land Acquisition Act, when the slogan then thereafter was Kill the Bill, the second time in the reforms on the agriculture sector.
And he could not bridge the gap within his own party. His party completely capitulated to the vested interests of state governments. You look at the ease of doing business.
I mean, you know, if you want to open a shop or a restaurant or a hotel, you need between 50 and 60 clearances. No prime minister or cabinet minister wants to touch that area. The only minister who has brought down the number of clearances and made it a shorter distance to think is Nitin Bhatkari.
I mean, you know, because he's virtually a bulldozer in the ministry itself. So, the other ministers have all played safe because the political vested interests of the state governments are far too combative. Look at the GST, what's happening?
I mean, they are now creating classifications within classifications.
Govindraj Ethiraj: Got it. AKB, may I put the same question to you? So, Bombay Club or rather industry, it was clearly put in its place in a manner of speaking in 91, because Manmohan Singh maybe with the political capital and tailwind he had refused to even think about them, look at them, respond to them.
Today I'm sure they thank him or at some point at least they thanked him. But how do you see that relationship or equation having evolved or not evolved or where are we today?
AK Bhattacharya: Well, you know, I think what was happening in 1991 and I go back to my theme of Manmohan Singh's second avatar was that the ability of the Narasimha Rao government in taking on industry. I think it is wrong to assume that industry agreed to those decisions willingly. I am aware and I was an active reporter at that time and I knew and I know how industry was not happy with many of the decisions that the Narasimha Rao government under Manmohan Singh's finance ministership were taking.
So, it requires some courage, some clear vision, some kind of consensus building exercise. Before a decision is announced, you take people on board so that those decisions get implemented. There is a policy of two steps forward, one step backward.
Now, I don't see those avenues are being explored under the current dispensation. Reform as Manmohan Singh used to say that designing reform is science but implementing reforms or executing reform is an art and I think this art is missing in the current dispensation where if you want to reform agricultural laws which are in the basic agricultural laws are in the state sector, the state list. Now, if you have to take the states on board, look at the GST problems right now because you have not been able to take the states on board through consensus building, you are not being able to rationalise the rates, you are continuing to go with five or six rates and forget about the fact that your popcorn is taxed in various rates.
So, therefore, going forward, you need a situation, you need a dispensation that acknowledges the role of consensus building, acknowledges the role of consultation, acknowledges the role of states to be on board or on the same platform as a centre to decide on future reforms because remember, these are not going to be easy reforms. These reforms requires full states participation. So, therefore, going forward, the journey of reform will continue to be fractious, continue to be challenging unless there is better understanding and awareness on the part of the dispensation in understanding and appreciating the logic and nature of political economy that prevails in India.
Govindraj Ethiraj: You use the term clear vision and let me use that or rather frame it as a slightly broader question and if you look back in the 30-40 years because I am concluding though I hope I don't know whether rightly that maybe Manmohan Singh was very good at intermediate vision but not necessarily very long-term vision. An intermediate vision plus response, good execution but maybe not long-term. My question nevertheless is, are we still then after all these years still lacking in that clear vision?
AK Bhattacharya: My sense is that there is a need for a long-term vision and I do believe that Manmohan Singh and Narasimha Rao and even Manmohan Singh as a Prime Minister, he did have this long-term vision. He also, of course, he had the benefit of an intermediate vision. But the question is that execution skills.
I always compare Manmohan Singh as Prime Minister and Manmohan Singh as Finance Minister and I find that visions were there under both the regimes, both the avatars so to say. But what was missing was one, he did not have a well-oiled team when he was the Prime Minister. But as Finance Minister, he had a well-oiled team, very effective, efficient team.
The second thing was as a Prime Minister, he was not always his own boss. He himself used to say that there cannot be two power centres in any governance structure, which means that there has to be only one power centre and in UPA 1 and UPA 2, there was this big debate about Manmohan Singh, was he always the final boss of things to do? He did show that he was a final boss when it came to India-US civil nuclear deal because he risked the government's life or tenure and went ahead for it.
But on all other issues, I think he did not show that conviction to go that extra mile to implement his vision in my view.
Govindraj Ethiraj: Right. And Shankar, if I may put the same question to you, clear vision or a clarity of vision, 1991 to today, was that the best in terms of… because I mean, when we look back, it was momentous decisions but also brought about by circumstances.
Versus today, do we have clearer vision? Are we still responding to the problems of the past? Or in your mind, maybe if I could add a supplemental to that, I mean, who has had in the last fifty years the best economic vision for India?
But you can answer that in the same situation.
Shankkar Aiyar: I think every government has had some 25-year-old plan for 25 years, 5 years, 10 years, Vixit, Bharat, 2047. All of these are basically aspirational thoughts. I mean, Franklin Roosevelt was the longest serving president, I think if I'm not mistaken, in the US.
And there's a book written on him called The Juggler, where actually all his New Deal came through different circumstances. In the case of India's reforms, I think what happens is that the regimes respond to situation. So, context changes everything.
So, they respond to the context. And unlike the 91 period where the financial sector or the economic team was very powerful and they got things done. In the second, when he was prime minister between 2004 and 2009, his cabinet had a decent team, argumentative, but yet decent team and they got some things done.
The third avatar that he had, which AKB nicely said the final incarnation as prime minister, there he has, I think, sullied his copybook by having yes men, the kind of team that he had around him. So, all the reforms that we have said, we are very proud of saying that no reform has had a U-turn in India and stuff like that. But most of the reforms have been low-hanging fruits.
The real next-gen reforms are waiting for the next generation to do it or the next crisis to sort of make it happen. I don't think vision, the idea of grand strategy sounds good, but as long as when you have a team to execute it.
Govindraj Ethiraj: So, both of you have interacted with Dr. Manmohan Singh, but the anecdote that I'm trying to draw out, because I heard it in some other context and I was trying to reach out to that person, he could not join today because he's also in a remote place where there's no access. You know, instances where you felt where he was able to combine his very simple and humble approach to life with his very macro job or maybe sort of one illustrated the other or one informed the other. So, are there anecdotes from your encounters that you can think of?
Shankkar Aiyar: So, I have two anecdotes. One, I will tell you about, I mean, you know, the basic decency of a person. So, Chidambaram, P.
Chidambaram had a book release which Manmohan Singh insisted should happen at his house, at the Prime Minister's house and as soon as the event got over, he got down from the dais and started walking very speedily towards the end of the banquet where the tea and coffee were served. On the way, he stopped and asked Chidambaram because Chidambaram's mother had come for the release of the book and he asked Chidambaram's mother, can she have tea or coffee? So, Chidambaram said, yeah, she has tea and coffee.
So, he went, got a server with both tea and coffee, stood and served the tea and coffee to Chidambaram's mother. I mean, whatever else was happening in their political thing and that is the case. The other thing, when I last met him some couple of years back or whatever, I sort of jokingly asked him, I said, Sir, all your former devotees and disciples have jumped the fence and have proved themselves to be ideologically flexible.
How do you see that? So, he sort of smiled and he said, people have to find ways to confront the challenges of their time, which I thought was the most sophisticated definition of opportunists that he could... and he laughed after that.
I mean, he was a terrific listener and in a sense, I mean, everything... he never once told me that you've written this, I didn't like this or whatever, never.
AK Bhattacharya: I will give you three instances and starting with when he was the Prime Minister. As the Prime Minister, he used to meet journalists, you know, in his breakfast, in his racecourse road office. You know, he's such an humble person and yet his sense of humour is so strong that you cannot just, you know, you cannot think of Manmohan Singh without that.
So, I was formally... the media advisor introduced me to him saying that he is Sachin Ashok Bhattacharya. He of course said that, yes, of course I know him, of course I know him and then Manmohan Singh with a very sad smile on his face, but he has stopped meeting me now.
Now, I did not know what to say. That's Manmohan Singh, you know. He is actually disarming you by this and the conversation after that went on and everything, everything was fine.
That is the first thing. The second was when he was the Finance Minister. After the Harshad Mehta scam and the JPC report came out, not the full report, but the draft report was out wherein he was being not indicted, but he was being shown as a sleeping Finance Minister.
He was very, very upset. So, I went to his office and met him and said that, why don't you give an interview and talk to him. He said, fine, I will give an interview.
So, it was a long interview which as a journalist, I would... I used it for a variety of issues on economy and everything and finally we came to the stock market and then he said that, you know, the history will not judge me as a sleeping Finance Minister. That became the headline of the newspapers that day, that night.
Now, while I was coming home, coming to my office to file the interview, the PIB officers got to know that I have met the Finance Minister. The PIB officer obviously wanted to check with me what am I going to write. So, I said, he gave me a fantastic story.
Now, that was communicated back to Manmohan Singh. At around nine o'clock, those were the days when we were landlines. So, in my office, I suddenly get a call and I picked it up and it is Manmohan Singh on the line and said that, I believe you have got a very exciting story out of my interview.
So, I told him, sir, whatever you told me, I am going to write. So, I hope you have no problem. No, no, no, no.
I have no problem. But I leave it to your good judgement. That was the conversation.
So, that was Manmohan Singh. And the final thing is that, even before his name was announced as the Finance Minister in the cabinet, the cabinet communique, he started operating from North Block. Even though the President's office, the Cabinet Secretary had issued the formal notice.
So, I went and wanted to go and meet him. So, he met me. He sat on the same sofa where I was seated next to me.
And I said, sir, how is the state of the Indian economy? Obviously, it was no good. You know what he did?
He extended his right hand to me and said, will you like to feel my pulse? He was such a man, you know, what do you do? This is Manmohan Singh, you know.
Govindraj Ethiraj: Right. Firstly, AKB and Shankar, thank you so much for sharing your perspectives and your experiences and your meetings and everything that came out of it. It's been a pleasure speaking to you both.
I think we've got a sense on what Manmohan Singh stood for and perhaps what he would do today if he was around faced with similar economic conditions with the objective of taking India somewhere economically. So, it's been a pleasure speaking to you both. Thank you so much for joining me.
Shankkar Aiyar: Thank you, Govind.
AK Bhattacharya: Thank you. Thank you, Govind.
