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'Dr. Manmohan Singh' () (born 26 September 1932) is the 14^th and current Prime Minister of India. Dr. Singh is a member of the Indian National Congress party and became the first Sikh to become Prime Minister of India on May 22, 2004. He is regarded by some as the 'most educated' Indian Prime Minister in history.^[1] He is considered one of the most qualified and influential figures in India's recent history, mainly because of the economic reforms he had initiated in 1991 when he was Finance Minister under Prime Minister Narasimha Rao.^[2]

Contents

Early Life and Family

Career

Economic reforms and ascent to power

Opposition and 2004 election

Tenure as Prime Minister

Dr. Manmohan Singh's career

References

See also

External links

Early Life and Family

He was born on 26 September, 1932, in Gah, Punjab (now in Chakwal district, Pakistan). He has an Undergraduate (1952) and a Master's degree (1954) from Punjab University, Chandigarh; an Undergraduate degree (1957) from Cambridge University (St. John's College) and a PhD (1962) from Oxford University (Nuffield College). The University of Oxford awarded him an honorary Doctor of Civil Law degree in June 2005, and in October 2006, the University of Cambridge followed with the same honour.
Dr. Singh married Mrs. Gursharan Kaur in 1958 and they have three daughters.

Career

Dr. Singh, an economist by profession, worked for International Monetary Fund in his younger days.^[3] Dr. Singh is known to be an unassuming politician, enjoying a formidable, highly respected and admired image.^[4] Due to his work at the UN, International Monetary Fund and other international bodies, he is highly respected around the world. He was awarded the Outstanding Parliamentarian Award in 2002. Before becoming Prime Minister, he served as the Finance Minister under Narasimha Rao. He is credited for transforming the economy in the early 90s during the financial crisis. He served as Leader of the Opposition in the Upper house, from 1998 - 2004 when the Bharatiya Janata Party led coalition government was in office.
His economic policies - which included getting rid of several socialist policies - were popular, especially among the middle class. He enjoys strong support among the middle and educated classes of India due to his educational background. Dr. Singh lost his seat in the Lower House from South Delhi in 1999. He is thus the only Indian Prime Minister never to have been an elected member of the Lower House of Parliament. He has been a member of the Rajya Sabha from Assam since 1991.

Economic reforms and ascent to power

: ''See Also: Economic Reforms under Rao''
Singh served as the Governor of the Reserve Bank of India from 1982 to 1985, and was elevated to finance minister in 1991 by Prime Minister Narasimha Rao.
Dr. Singh is widely regarded as the architect of India's original economic reform programme which was enacted in 1991 under Rao's administration. The economic liberalization package pushed by Singh and Rao opened the nation to foreign direct investment and reduced the red tape that had previously impeded business growth. The liberalization was prompted by an acute balance-of-payments crisis whereby the Indian government, left without sufficient reserves to meet its obligations, had begun preparations to mortgage its gold reserves to the Bank of England in order to obtain the cash reserves needed to run the country.
Many see the 1991 liberalization as the first of a series of economic liberalizations throughout the 1990s and 2000s that have raised India's growth rates substantially since the early 1990s. Despite its economic liberalization policies, Rao's government was defeated in the next election.

Opposition and 2004 election

Dr. Singh stayed with the Congress Party despite continuous marginalization and defeats in the elections of 1996, 1998 and 1999. He did not join the rebels in a major split which occurred in 1999, when three Congress leaders objected to Sonia Gandhi's rise as Congress President and Leader of the Opposition. Being touted as the Congress choice for the PM's job, she became a target of nationalists who objected to her Italian birth. It seemed that a party which turned to old links in the Nehru family and a foreigner for political leadership had no future or potential to look forward to. But Dr. Singh continued to stay on as a leader within the party, most notably helping to revamp the party's platform and organization.
An alliance led by the Congress Party won a surprisingly high number of seats in the Parliamentary elections of 2004. The Left Front decided to support a coalition government led by the Congress Party from the outside. Sonia Gandhi was elected leader of the Congress Parliamentary Party and was expected to become the Prime Minister. In a surprise move, she declined to accept the post and instead nominated Dr. Singh. He secured the nomination for prime minister on May 19, 2004 when the then President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam officially asked him to form a government. Although most expected him to head the Finance Ministry himself, he entrusted the job to P. Chidambaram.
His appointment is notable as it comes 20 years after India witnessed significant tensions between the Indian central government and the Punjabi Sikh community. After Congress Party Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, the mother-in-law of Sonia Gandhi, ordered central government troops to storm the Golden Temple (the holiest site of Sikhism) in Amritsar, Punjab to quell a separatist movement, she was assassinated by her Sikh bodyguards. The result was a genocidal campaign against Sikhs by the central Indian government, and many innocent Sikhs lost their lives during riots promoted by the Congress Party immediately after the assasination.

Tenure as Prime Minister

Dr. Singh's image is generally regarded as intellectual, honest but cautious, attentive to working class people (on whose votes he was elected), and technocratic. Although legislative achievements have been few and the Congress-led alliance is routinely hampered by conflicts, Singh's administration has focused on reducing the fiscal deficit, providing debt-relief to poor farmers, extending social programs and advancing the pro-industry economic and tax policies that have launched the country on a major economic expansion course since 2002. Singh has been the image of the Congress campaign to defuse religious tensions and conflicts and bolster political support from minorities like Muslims, Christians and Sikhs.
The Prime Minister's foreign policy has been to continue the new peace process with Pakistan initiated by his predecessor, Atal Bihari Vajpayee. Exchange visits by top leaders from both countries have highlighted this year, as has reduced terrorism and increased prosperity in the state of Kashmir.

His government has endeavored to build stronger relations with the United States, People's Republic of China and European nations, especially the U.K. But the Government suffered a setback when it lost the support of a key ally, African Union members, for its bid for a permanent membership to the U.N. Security Council with veto privileges. One of the biggest achievements of Manmohan Singh's Government has been a Nuclear Deal between India and the U.S.A. Under Dr.Singh, an economist and Finance minister P. Chidambaram , India's economic growth has continued, with the GDP growing at a very fast rate of 8%. This has resulted in India becoming a trillion dollar economy.

Dr. Manmohan Singh's career

★ First Class Honours degree in Economics, University of Cambridge, (1957)

★ Punjab University, Chandigarh, India

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★ Senior Lecturer, Economics (1957-1959)

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★ Professor of International Trade (1969-1971)

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★ Reader (1959-1963)

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★ Professor (1963-1965)

★ D. Phil in Economics, Nuffield College at University of Oxford, (1962)

★ Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi

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★ Honorary Professor (1996)

★ Chief, Financing for Trade Section, UNCTAD, United Nations Secretariat, New York

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★ 1966 : Economic Affairs Officer 1966

★ Economic Advisor, Ministry of Foreign Trade, India (1971-1972)

★ Chief Economic Advisor, Ministry of Finance, India, (1972-1976)

★ Honorary Professor, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi (1976)

★ Director, Reserve Bank of India (1976-1980)

★ Director, Industrial Development Bank of India (1976-1980)

★ Secretary, Ministry of Finance (Department of Economic Affairs), Government of India, (1977-1980)

★ Governor, Reserve Bank of India (1982-1985)

★ Deputy Chairman, Planning Commission of India, (1985-1987)

★ Advisor to Prime Minister of India on Economic Affairs (1990-1991)

★ Finance Minister of India, (June 21, 1991 - May 15, 1996)

★ Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha (1998-2004)

★ Prime Minister of India (May 22,2004 - Present)

References

1. http://www.telegraphindia.com/1050517/asp/frontpage/story_4749765.asp].
2. India's architect of reforms .
3. Singh reopens reform chapter
4. Dr.Singh ranked as the best PM ever in India .

See also

★ Gursharan Kaur, his wife

★ Amrit Kaur, his youngest daughter, a staff attorney at the ACLU

★ Economic reforms under Narasimha Rao

External links

'Government of India Links'

★ Prime Minister's Office - Official page includes Profile and Curriculum Vitae

★ ManmohanSingh.org

★ Prime Minister's profile at the Government of India website

★ List of current Union Ministers, includes the portfolios held by the Prime Minister.
'Other Sites'

★ Dr. Singh the Prime Minister - ArasiyalTalk.com

★ Profile of Manmohan Singh from Nilacharal

★ Our Problems are internal

★ India's architect of reforms - BBC NEWS

★ Soni leads the new ministers to thank Gandhi

★ Marxist analysis of the 2004 Indian elections from the Anti-Caste Information Page