Clipped from: https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/manmohan-singh-nehruvian-progressive-legacy-9746824/
Manmohan Singh secured developmental space for India and positioned India brilliantly. It is capital that we are still living off.
Like all great men in history, Manmohan Singh’s life transcends the nit-picking accounting of policy successes or failures, a short-term historical reckoning, or simply a focus on his interpersonal relations. (Express Archives)
It is a measure of Dr Manmohan Singh’s greatness that his life and influence cannot be described in any conventional categories of political analysis. Assessments of his legacy are apt to be clouded by three short-sighted approaches. One is strictly instrumental, chalking up a long list of economic reforms over which he presided. This list is impressive indeed. He is, arguably, one of the most influential economic policymakers in the annals of history. The second approach that clouds judgment is to see his legacy through the eventual meltdown and defeat of UPA II. He was right that history would judge him kindlier than the contingent political failures of the era. The third mistake, often promoted even by his friends, has a touch of condescension to it. Epithets like “the accidental prime minister” or the “ideal number two man, capable, full of integrity and loyal” — an unbeatable combination — underestimate how he managed to remain his own man and stamp a vision on the world, amidst all the upheavals of bureaucratic and political life.
Like all great men in history, Manmohan Singh’s life transcends the nit-picking accounting of policy successes or failures, a short-term historical reckoning, or simply a focus on his interpersonal relations. What is astounding is that, like all influential lives, his is both a personal marvel and a reflection of the zeitgeist. How did this person, who rose from humble circumstances, whose defining characteristic was an unmatched decency, and who had no political base, end up being indispensable in so many capacities? He was not just a bureaucrat or a finance minister but a defining Prime Minister of India for a decade. In a political culture where the one virtue that is always reliably absent is decency, Manmohan Singh’s ability to hold on to that trait now seems almost saintly. The nature of his power was complicated. In lesser men, it would have bred insecurity or a conniving will to project it. But to be both at the pinnacle of power and hold onto a consistent reticence about it is remarkable.
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