Dr Manmohan Singh, who served as India’s Prime Minister for two full terms, died on December 26, 2024 at the age of 92. In the course of his career, Dr Singh held important positions as an administrator, policy planner, economist, and politician. He was Governor of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) (1982–85), Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission (1985–87), and Secretary-General of the South Commission (1987–90). He was a professional economist who, first as Union Finance Minister (1991–96) and later as Prime Minister (2004–14), led a major shift in the country’s economic path.

The tributes that poured in after his death acknowledged not only his remarkable career, but also his personal qualities. Those who knew and worked with him unfailingly remembered his dignified personality and liberal world-view, attributes conspicuously absent in the toxic political environment of today’s India. However, and despite the important positions he held and the public policies he piloted over the years, Dr Singh’s legacy is a complex and contentious one – neither that of a visionary politician nor of a people’s economist. Most commentators (e.g. Wolf 2025) hailed his contributions to India’s economic “reforms” after 1991, but they did not mention the immiserising impact of those policies on a majority of the Indian population. The economic policies that Dr Singh spearheaded – policies which have been implemented with enthusiasm by successor governments – continue to be opposed and invite enormous protest from large sections of Indian society.

Early Views on the Economy

Dr Singh’s early life was marked by the tumult of the Partition and its horrors. His family migrated from West Punjab to India at Independence in 1947. He got a Bachelor’s degree in Economics from Hindu College in Amritsar and a Master’s degree from Panjab University, then in Hoshiarpur. This was followed by a Tripos in Economics at the University of Cambridge and a D. Phil from the University of Oxford. His doctoral thesis, titled “India’s Export Performance, 1951–1960,” tried to estimate the additional exports that would be required for India to eliminate its dependence on concessional aid flows (Balasubramanyam 2001, p. 84).

Until the late 1980s, Dr Singh’s views on economic issues in his various official capacities were closely aligned with those of the Government of India. He was largely, though not radically, sceptical of state intervention, and supported – again, not radically – deregulation, “openness,” markets, and competition (see Singh 1990). For example, he questioned industrial licensing and import controls by the government, even as he spoke of the need for state intervention and public investment in agriculture and the social sector.

Montek Singh Ahluwalia recalls in his memoirs that Dr Singh “genuinely believed that India’s transition to modernity could not occur without the transformation of agriculture” (Ahluwalia 2020, chapter 5). He writes that Dr Singh, as Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission in the 1980s, had major differences with the then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi on the question of Plan funding for agriculture. These differences, according to speculation current at the time, were among the reasons why Rajiv Gandhi once referred to the Planning Commission as “a bunch of jokers.” At that time, Dr Singh was not a critic of the public sector-based industrial policy of the Nehruvian era either. In an interview, he said: “I subscribed to it, in fact, most of us did. It seemed the right strategy at that time” (Balasubramanyam 2001, p. 91).

Dr Singh was also not an admirer of the World Bank-promoted view that the East Asian economic successes were “free market miracles.” In his opinion, there were “several other factors” that were responsible for the East Asian success, such as “land reforms, emphasis on human resource development, and purposeful state intervention” (ibid., p. 84). He spoke highly of the major investments made in “education and health” in China under Mao Zedong.

A major aspect of Dr Singh’s career was his tenure as Secretary-General of the South Commission in Geneva between 1987 and 1990. The South Commission’s report, titled “The Challenge to the South” (1990), criticised the economic strategies of the global North and emphasised the need for greater South–South cooperation as a strategy for development. It said, for instance, that the “fate of the South is increasingly dictated” by the leading powers of the North, and that “the ‘gunboat’ diplomacy of the nineteenth century still has its economic and political counterpart in the closing years of the twentieth.” The report also contained a sharp critique of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the dominance of the North in their governance, loan conditionalities, and structural adjustment policies. It noted that

… developed countries were able to use international financial institutions to impose their view on Third World countries and at the same time to demand that the latter should “adjust” their economies through contractionary policies. The policies prescribed by the World Bank and the IMF were thus inevitably unbalanced; they did not seek any adjustment by the developed countries to take into account their own heavy contribution to the troubles of the South. This was a form of neo-colonialism; the world’s economic metropolises were forcing on the South the whole burden of adjustment to an impaired world economy, while themselves continuing to grow …

Further:

Cross-conditionality – the practice whereby the conditions imposed by one institution are also imposed by the other – is now a practically universal fact of life. It has left developing countries with almost no discretion in determining their economic policies. Although both institutions now officially endorse the concept of growth-oriented adjustment, the truth is that … their increased involvement in the domestic policies of developing countries in the 1980s did not promote either growth or equity in the South. (The South Commission 1990)

Ironically, however, the very same economist who as Secretary-General of the South Commission authored views such as quoted above, just a year later would be hailed in conservative circles as the “architect of neoliberal economic reforms in India” – reforms explicitly modelled on the Washington Consensus. In 1991, Dr Manmohan Singh was invited by Prime Minister Narasimha Rao to assume charge as Union Finance Minister. And he prefaced his neoliberal “reform” budget for 1991–92 with a quotation from Victor Hugo: “No power on earth can stop an idea whose time has come” (Singh 1991, p. 31).

The Crisis and Reforms

There was no “deep economic crisis” in India in 1991. India had a balance of payments crisis (which is when a country is short of foreign exchange and becomes unable to either pay for essential imports or service its external debt commitments) and this was dressed up as an economic crisis. As Dr Singh was to say later: “we converted that crisis into an opportunity to launch a wide-ranging programme of structural reforms” (Balasubramanyam 2001, p. 89). In fact, the situation on many fronts in the real economy was better in 1991 than in the late 1980s (Chandrasekhar and Ghosh 2002): the index of agricultural production, which increased by 0.6 per cent between 1988–89 and 1989–90, rose by 3.2 per cent between 1989–90 and 1990–91; and the index of industrial production grew at 8.6 per cent between 1988–89 and 1989–90, and 8.3 per cent between 1989–90 and 1990–91. Thus, there was no “crisis” in the real economy in 1991 that necessitated a radical programme of stabilisation and structural adjustment.

However, a balance of payments crisis built up through the 1980s, particularly under the Rajiv Gandhi regime. It was in that decade that India came out of the so-called Hindu rate of growth of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, and achieved a new average annual GDP growth rate of 5.6 per cent. In the 1980s, several poverty alleviation schemes were introduced or expanded; employment increased in the government and in the public sector; and the maximum rate of personal income tax was reduced. Together, these measures led to a rise in the demand for consumer goods from the top two deciles of the population, and contributed to an average industrial growth rate of about 8 per cent (Bhaduri and Nayyar 2000). Agricultural growth also revived in this late-Green Revolution period.

The problem was that the increased government expenditure that drove the growth of the 1980s was funded through external borrowings, and not through forms of domestic resource mobilisation like taxation (Chandrasekhar and Ghosh 2002). Other precipitating factors included the steep rise in the country’s oil import bill following the Gulf War of 1990; the fall in the flow of remittances from workers in the Gulf region; and the worsening of the trade balance due to India’s exports to West Asia being adversely affected. These led to an outward flight of capital from India, large-scale withdrawal of deposits in Indian banks by non-resident Indians (NRI), and a slowdown in the repatriation of export proceeds by Indian exporters. The external reserves of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) dropped to a point where they could finance hardly three months of imports. It was in this context that India decided to approach the IMF for a loan in 1991.

Neoliberalism is a class project. In India, its main features were an expansion in the space for accumulation by the capitalists; an increase in the concentration of their capital and profits; and further dispossession of workers and small producers from their means of production, pushing larger numbers of them into the reserve army of labour. The Indian state actively facilitated a process of transfer of assets from one class to another – both explicitly through cronyism, privatisation, trade liberalisation, reduction of corporate taxes, tax exemptions, and labour law reforms, and implicitly by squeezing small production. India also entered a regime of fiscal austerity and reprioritisation of expenditures away from critical producer subsidies. The conditions attached to the IMF loans – as was true in most cases of imposition of the Washington Consensus – were just means to achieve these ends.

India had had an earlier experience with the IMF, when it opted for an Extended Fund Facility (EFF) loan to tide over the balance of payments problems created by the second oil shock of 1979–80 (Government of West Bengal 1981). M. Narasimham, who later wrote the blueprints for India’s financial liberalisation in 1984, 1991, and 1997, was then India’s executive director at the World Bank. While the conditionalities attached to the 1982 loan did not include an explicit restriction on fiscal deficit, they did contain clauses that restricted the amount the RBI could lend to the government. The IMF continued to be interested in Indian affairs even after the loan agreement expired in 1984. Insiders recall that Michel Camdessus, managing director of the IMF, visited Rajiv Gandhi in 1988, expressed concern about the continuing balance of payments problem, recommended a cut in the fiscal deficit, and offered a fresh IMF loan (Ahluwalia 2020, chapter 5).

By 1991, the top echelons of the bureaucracy had fully absorbed the tenets of IMF-style liberalisation (Srinivas 2019, p. xvii).¹ This did not happen in a vacuum; the roles of organisations like the IMF and the World Bank were central to the bureaucracy’s internalisation of the neoliberal ideology. For long, the IMF had close linkages with India’s civil service: civil service officers regularly visited the IMF for short/long periods of service, and the IMF organised frequent training sessions for them on “sound economic policies,” “macroeconomic policy,” and “financial sector reforms” (IMF 2007). Though official documents termed these as training in “financial programming frameworks,” the IMF itself saw them as aimed at disseminating its conservative financial ideology among bureaucrats (IMF 2003).²

Thanks to these close links with the World Bank and the IMF, the Indian bureaucracy had a ready blueprint for liberalisation much before Narasimha Rao took over as Prime Minister in 1991. Montek Singh Ahluwalia prepared the so-called “M Document” in 1990, titled “Towards a Restructuring of India’s Industrial, Trade, and Fiscal Policies,” which outlined a medium-term strategy of reforms (Ahluwalia 1990). The key problem identified in the note was “excessive expansion in expenditure” that necessitated “containing expenditure,” including food and fertilizer subsidies. It urged the Planning Commission not to announce schemes with new financial commitments like the “Right to Work.” The note also spoke of partial privatisation of public sector units, trade liberalisation, depreciation of the exchange rate, and a red carpet for foreign direct investment (FDI).

When Narasimha Rao took over as the Prime Minister, he was told that the economic situation was worrying and that a drastic shift had become inevitable. The bureaucracy convinced him of the inevitability of economic and financial reforms. Rao then chose Dr Manmohan Singh as Finance Minister to implement the blueprint of neoliberal reforms. According to some observers, Dr Singh had “serious reservations” on IMF-type packages, but he agreed to take on the mantle (Kurien 1996, p. 7). In an interview in 1996, Dr Singh assessed the World Bank and the IMF as follows:

… these institutions are not in the business of charity. They want their money to be returned and therefore they impose conditions. The question was whether the conditions they were imposing on us were inconsistent with the long-term interests of India. … But in two years we had terminated the IMF programmes. Thereafter we would be on our own. (Emphasis added; Sanghvi 1996)

While the IMF loan agreement came to an end in 1994, the “be on our own” strategy was one by which the Indian policy makers took over the mantle from the IMF and themselves ensured an alignment of policy with the spirit of the Washington Consensus.

The changes of the 1990s were rapid and wide-ranging. The areas of “reform” included trade, exchange rate management, industry, public finance, and the financial sector. Macroeconomic “stabilisation” measures were announced, to be accompanied by “structural reform” measures such as industrial deregulation, liberalisation of foreign direct investment, trade liberalisation, overhauling of public enterprises, and financial sector reforms.

In the Industrial Policy of 1991, policy changes included the removal of industrial licensing, a reduction in the number of industries reserved for the public sector, abolition of restrictions on investment and expansion under the Monopolies and Restrictive Trade Practices (MRTP) Act of 1969, automatic approval of foreign investment, elimination of quantitative import restrictions on intermediate and capital goods, and reduction in protective customs tariffs. Agricultural reforms introduced over the years included replacement of tariff-based quantitative controls, partial decontrol of fertilizer prices, removal of restrictions in agricultural marketing, relaxation of restrictions imposed by the Essential Commodities Act of 1955, replacement of the universal public food distribution system with a targeted system, and steps to encourage corporate farming on a large scale.

A brief and selected summary of different measures of economic reform in India after 1991 – compiled from various official reports and documents – is provided below:

1. Fiscal, monetary, and financial policy
   • 1991: Rupee devalued by 18 per cent; devaluation regularly continued afterwards
   • After 1991: Gradual introduction of full convertibility for current account transactions; liberalisation of foreign exchange dealings; attempts to reduce fiscal deficit; limited tax reforms
   • 1991: Banking sector liberalisation; deregulation of interest rates; implementation of prudential norms based on Basel norms
   • 1992 onwards: Statutory Liquidity Ratio (SLR) and Cash Reserve Ratio (CRR) requirements of banks gradually reduced to ease liquidity
   • 1992: Partial convertibility of rupee allowed
   • 1992 onwards: Rationalisation and targeting of subsidies on fuel, fertilizers, and food; introduction of Direct Benefit Transfers (DBT) from 2013 onwards
   • 1993: Foreign Institutional Investors (FIIs) allowed access into Indian financial markets
   • 1993 onwards: Entry of private sector banks and foreign banks
   • 1994: Lending norms for banks liberalised; exchange control regulations liberalised; full convertibility on current account
   • 1994 onwards: End to automatic sterilisation of deficits by phasing out ad hoc treasury bills and then abolishing them in 1997; shift from direct to indirect controls in liquidity management
   • 1999 onwards: Reform of the insurance sector; opening up the insurance sector to private and foreign players, up to 49 per cent initially and then to 74 per cent
   • 2002 onwards: Introduction of asset reconstruction companies and enactment of the Securitisation and Reconstruction of Financial Assets and Enforcement of Security Interest (SARFESI) Act to facilitate non-performing asset recoveries of banks
   • 2003: Passage of fiscal responsibility legislation at the Union level
   • 2004 onwards: Passage of fiscal responsibility legislations by States
   • 2004: Relaxation of capital controls; reform of regulatory institutions such as the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) and the Insurance Regulatory Authority (IRA)
   • 2016 onwards: Adoption of the inflation targeting framework; enactment of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code in 2016
2. Trade policy
   • 1991: Virtual abolition of import licensing controls; number of import tariff rates reduced; peak import tariff rates reduced from 300 per cent to 150 per cent
   • 1992 onwards: Further and gradual reduction of customs duties and tariffs
   • 1992 to 1997: Elimination of quantitative import restrictions on intermediate and capital goods
   • 1994: Signing of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) agreement and entry into the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in 1995
   • 1998 to 2001: Elimination of quantitative import restrictions on consumer goods
   • 1998 onwards: More goods moved into Open General Licence (OGL), allowing for free imports without licenses
   • 2005 onwards: Introduction of Special Economic Zones (SEZs)
   • 2009 onwards: Promotion of bilateral and regional free trade agreements
3. Industrial policy and foreign capital
   • 1991: Virtual abolition of industrial licensing for all new projects; further abolition in 1998–99; sharp reduction in the number of industries reserved for the public sector (opening up of electricity and communications); investment ceilings for small-scale industries and tiny industries raised and constraints of locations of enterprises relaxed; automatic approval of FDI in software industries up to 51 per cent for companies and 100 per cent for non-resident Indians
   • 1991 and 1997: Substantive relaxation of foreign investment up to 51 per cent equity initially; liberalisation of foreign direct and portfolio investment begins
   • 1991 onwards: Threshold limits of assets in Monopoly and Restrictive Trade Practices (MRTP) companies and dominant undertakings abolished; MRTP Act repealed in 2002; Competition Act introduced in 2002
   • 1992: Value-added services in the telecom sector opened up to the private sector, which included cellular mobile phones, radio paging, electronic mail, and voice mail
   • 1992: Oil exploration and setting up of new refineries allowed in both private and joint sectors
   • 1993: Power generation opened up for both domestic and foreign private investment; private companies allowed to own and develop captive coal mines
   • 1998: Projects for electricity generation, transmission, and distribution permitted foreign equity participation up to 100 per cent on automatic approval route
   • Gradual removal of items reserved for exclusive production by small-scale industries; shift from protection to promotion
4. Agricultural policy
   • 1992 onwards: Deregulation of seed industry; liberalisation of agricultural credit policies and changes in priority sector regulations; partial decontrol of fertilizer pricing; expansion into Nutrient Based Subsidy scheme from 2009
   • 1995 onwards: Abolition of restrictions on movement of commodities; liberalisation of agricultural exports and imports with the WTO agreement; reforms in public food distribution system; gradual reduction in subsidies on irrigation and electricity
   • 2003 and 2017: Encouragement to States to implement the Model Acts related to regulated markets, contract farming, and storage
5. Social sector
   • 1997: Introduction of targeting in the public food distribution system; shift to National Food Security Act in 2013
   • 2001 onwards: Educational and health reforms implemented at the State level; promotion of private schools and universities; promotion of private hospitals and introduction of user fees in public health care; move from public health care to health insurance
   • 2009 onwards: Introduction of Aadhaar and its integration with DBT scheme
6. Labour policies
   • 2001 onwards: Proposals put forward for reducing “labour market rigidity” and promoting “labour market flexibility”; introduction of hire-and-fire and fixed-term employment; promotion of casual labour; ease of closure of enterprises
   • 2019 onwards: Introduction of four labour codes merging more than 29 labour laws
7. Privatisation and disinvestment
   • 1991: Disinvestment policy for public sector enterprises officially introduced; reservation of industries for public sector abandoned
   • 1996: Disinvestment Commission set up for identifying public sector units for equity disinvestment; Foreign Investment Promotion Council set up
   • 1999 onwards: Department of Disinvestment formed (later renamed as Department of Investment and Public Asset Management or DIPAM)
   • 1998: Disinvestment of selected public sector enterprises begins, ranging from minority stake sales to strategic sales
   • 2021 onwards: Introduction of national monetisation pipeline for infrastructure assets of public sector enterprises
8. Tax policy
   • 1992 onwards: Personal income tax restructured with lower peak taxes, fewer slabs, and higher exemption limits; taxation on capital gains reduced and restructured
   • 1992 onwards: Reduction in effective corporate tax rates, particularly sharply in 1997 and 2019; removal of various tax exemptions
   • 1994: Introduction of service tax
   • 2005 onwards: Introduction of Value Added Tax (VAT); replaced with Goods and Services Tax (GST) in 2017

The Legacy of Manmohan Singh’s Reforms

As the “architect” of India’s neoliberal reforms, was Dr Manmohan Singh successful in achieving what he set out to do? Two claims are often made by apologists of the reform agenda about its outcomes. Let us briefly look at these. First, did the reforms of 1991 enable India to come out of the Hindu rate of growth? No, because that barrier, as we have shown above, had been broken in the decade of the 1980s itself. Secondly, did India’s growth rate accelerate after 1991–92? The answer would be in the affirmative for only a short period, when the global economic environment was favourable. If we use national accounts data with 2011–12 as base year, the average GDP growth rate was 5.6 per cent between 1981–82 and 1990–91; 5.8 per cent between 1992–93 and 2002–03; 7.4 per cent between 2003–04 and 2010–11; and 6.4 per cent between 2011–12 and 2019–20. In other words, except for the period between 2003–04 and 2010–11, the growth rates after 1991 were only marginally higher than that of the 1980s.

Therefore, Dr Singh’s report card of those years is blotted in respect of his primary responsibility – namely, improving the economic and social well-being of the majority of the Indian people, which has no direct or causal relationship with figures of economic growth rates.

First and foremost, Dr Singh’s policies of economic reform jettisoned the objectives of India’s self-reliance, and opted instead for a skewed integration with the global economy. Institutional changes necessary for expanding domestic production were sidelined. Dependence on external markets for goods and resources was enlarged. And it was assumed that free trade would more than compensate for the deficits in domestic production. It was in this background that the import substitution path to industrialisation was sought to be demonised, and the slogan of “there is no alternative” but to embrace free trade and foreign direct investment (FDI) was advanced. Yet, at the same time, Dr Singh would deny that he was undermining the country’s self-reliance; in defence of his reforms, he would point to expanding exports as the only way to manage balance of payments issues and attain self-reliance. Evidently, you can always change the question to arrive at the right answer.

Thus, India’s trade deficit significantly widened in the period of economic reforms, while its domestic market, which is the enduring strength of success stories like China, grew at a snail’s pace. It was not for nothing that the “the dragon versus the elephant” comparison between China and India became popular.

Secondly, economic reforms inaugurated an era of enduring fiscal austerity. The withdrawal of the state from its core functions in the economy was a central theme of the reforms. In the three decades of reform, public expenditure relative to the size of the economy in India was severely curtailed. The total expenditure of the Union government as a share of GDP was 17.5 per cent between 1981–82 and 1990–91; 15.5 per cent between 1992–93 and 2002–03; 15.3 per cent between 2003–04 and 2010–11; and only 13.4 per cent between 2011–12 and 2019–20. The corresponding figures for the share of GDP in the capital expenditure of the Union government were 6 per cent, 3.2 per cent, 2.4 per cent, and 1.7 per cent respectively. Such a massive, long-term shrinkage of public expenditure and investment meant that critical spending in education, health, the social sector, and infrastructure was not made. Dr Singh, in response to such criticism, was forthright but unrepentant. In an interview in 2001, he said:

Some people have criticised the stabilisation programme as being anti-poor. I admit that in an economy, which has been living beyond its means, stabilisation does hurt. … It is true that fiscal compulsions have forced us to restrain the growth of all expenditure, including social expenditure. But … we had very little option but to do what I did. (Balasubramanyam 2001, p. 115)

Dr Singh’s hesitation to spend in the social sector was visible in other instances too. Just two examples from his tenure as Prime Minister may suffice. First, as was well known, Dr Singh was unenthusiastic about the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) that was introduced during the term of the first United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government. When the scheme was initially discussed, he took the position that it could be financed only if, and after, the annual growth rate of GDP exceeded 8 per cent. He also insisted that the budgetary allocation for the scheme could only be mobilised by curtailing a range of subsidies. This stance led to a stand-off between the Left parties and the Congress party, and the introduction of the MGNREGS was delayed by more than 18 months. Even then, Dr Singh prevailed in ensuring that the scheme was not expanded to urban areas; the number of days of work was brought down from 180 to 100; the target of providing 100 days of work was limited to one household and not one worker; the wages paid were fixed at less than the minimum wages; and the budget allocation for the scheme was not indexed to inflation. This is how Dr Singh put the brakes on one of India’s biggest social sector schemes.

Secondly, Dr Singh was strongly opposed to expanding the reach of the public distribution system (PDS). He took the position that reducing issue prices in the PDS would “destroy the incentive of our farmers to produce more food” (Prime Minister’s Office 2010). When the Supreme Court recommended that rotting foodgrains in the government’s overflowing godowns be distributed free to the poor, he took umbrage and said:

It is not possible in this country to give free food to all the poor people … 37 per cent of the population of this country is living below the poverty line. How are you going to give free food to such a large segment of our population?

Going further still, Dr Singh would not even consider a reduction in the issue prices of foodgrains; the most he agreed to was to not raise the issue prices. There is evidence to show that his reluctant approval of the National Food Security Act of 2013 was owing to pressure from outside the government, and in the political context of the impending elections in 2014.

Cuts in essential public expenditure and fiscal austerity were integral tenets of Dr Singh’s rulebook. Fiscal consolidation if led by higher revenue mobilisation rather than curtailment of expenditure is one matter, but he believed in exactly the opposite. According to him, raising taxes on the rich would be a disincentive for them to save and invest. It is worth noting that the tax–GDP ratio of the Union government rose only marginally, from 10 per cent to 11.6 per cent, between 1990–91 and 2024–25. This was significantly lower than the corresponding ratios for other emerging economies. During his tenure as Finance Minister, it upset him that “political issues” like the Babri Masjid demolition occupied centre stage after 1992, at the expense of issues such as reducing fiscal deficit. He lamented:

After [1992], it was just politics that was on everybody’s minds. And an important matter like cutting the fiscal deficit did not receive as much importance as it should have. (Sanghvi 1996)

If the sidelining of the slogan of self-reliance created economic challenges on the supply side, fiscal austerity triggered stagnation of the domestic market and created economic challenges on the demand side. The inability to expand aggregate demand acted as a significant drag on economic growth in India and left India’s economy vulnerable to multiple shocks in the global economy. This was another important outcome of the economic reforms in India.

Dr Singh’s backing for a few welfare-oriented legislations like the Right to Information (RTI) Act and the Forest Rights Act (FRA), in line with his government’s common minimum programme (CMP) with the Left parties, is often cited as evidence of his pro-poor commitment. Perhaps that is so, but his support was extended only to measures that did not involve large fiscal outlays.

It was agriculture, and the large section of India’s population directly dependent on it, that suffered the biggest setback as a result of the impact of what came to be called Manmohanomics, a term of approbation used in the conservative media. Not surprisingly, commentators have said little about this aspect of Dr Singh’s “contributions.” Over the long period of economic reforms, agricultural growth rates slowed down considerably (Ramakumar 2022); the annual growth rate of production of all crops, which stood at 3.4 per cent between 1981–82 and 1991–92, fell to 2.2 per cent between 1992–93 and 2019–20. There was a steady weakening of public institutional support to agriculture. Public capital formation in agriculture stagnated, as did public expenditure on research and extension. The protection offered to agriculture from predatory imports was removed, resulting in a fall of commodity prices. The input subsidy system was restructured as part of fiscal reforms, because of which input prices and costs of production increased sharply, and the profitability of cultivation fell.

The overall outcome of economic reforms in agriculture was widespread agrarian distress. From the late 1990s, there have been more than 300,000 farmer suicides in India as a direct consequence of the agrarian crisis. The wave of farmers’ agitations witnessed in the last few years were a response to the reform policies inaugurated by Dr Singh, ably extended and continued by the Narendra Modi government, and their devastating consequences for small and marginal farmers.

Praise is heard for Dr Singh for the sharp rise in the minimum support price (MSP) during his prime ministerial tenure. This, while true, was no act of benevolence. It was a natural outcome of the equally sharp rise in the prices of farm inputs that was engineered during his regime. For example, the UPA government introduced the Nutrient Based Subsidy (NBS) scheme for fertilizer pricing in 2009, by which the retail prices of fertilizers were left to the discretion of the fertilizer companies. Consequently, there was a skyrocketing of the retail prices of P and K fertilisers. MSPs are generally fixed on a cost-plus basis to sustain the long-run margin of 20 per cent over total costs. In the face of a sharp rise in input prices, the UPA government was forced to raise MSPs to maintain this margin; it did not have any other option.

Several commentators also credit Dr Singh with holding steady the Indian economy and its banking system amidst the global financial crisis of 2007–08. In fact, however, the real credit for proactively protecting the public character of India’s banking system must go to the RBI and its then Governor, Dr Y. V. Reddy. The RBI instituted counter-cyclical regulatory measures in the financial sector, ensured self-insurance by building up forex reserves, and moderated capital inflows. In each of these, Dr Reddy was in fact opposed by Dr Singh’s government. Dr Reddy has a chapter titled “Working with Chidambaram” in his memoirs (Reddy 2017), where he candidly writes how he had to stave off efforts by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Finance Minister P. Chidambaram to throw open the Indian banking system to global private profiteering and speculation.

For instance, when India’s forex reserves were expanding sharply in 2006–07, the RBI was inclined to tighten capital flows while the UPA government did not want to restrict capital flows. Dr Singh and Chidambaram sent A. K. Jha, the then finance secretary, as an emissary to Mumbai with a message to Dr Reddy that the RBI must loosen the controls on capital flows. But Dr Reddy stood his ground and the controls remained. Similar was the case when the government wanted to use forex reserves to finance infrastructure investment. Here again, Dr Reddy stood his ground and shot down the government’s proposal.

There are accounts in Dr Reddy’s memoirs on how Chidambaram wanted him to disregard signs of “overheating” of the economy, and allow “asset bubbles and excessive credit growth” to go unregulated. Dr Reddy also recalled the UPA government’s desire to allow foreign ownership of Indian banks with Chidambaram telling him that “this is a national commitment made to the global financial community,” and that “the Prime Minister also believes that it is in the national interest.” Dr Reddy went to the extent of offering to resign, but ensured that such a policy would be fully under the RBI’s authority and discretion.

In short, the Indian banking system was protected from the global financial crisis despite Dr Singh and Chidambaram. Left to them, they would have implemented a slew of privatisation and deregulation measures in banking and forex policies – leaving these systems fragile, volatile, and vulnerable to external shocks. In an interview, Dr Singh voiced his despair on not being able to move forward with privatisation of the banking sector:

In our country, organised labour is a very small part of the total labour force. But because it is unionised, this small segment can bring the economy of the country to a grinding halt. The labour force in the financial system is highly unionised and it also knows that the Government cannot declare a lock-out. The unions are also backed by the left-wing political parties such as the two Communist Parties. (Balasubramanyam 2001)

Another aspect of Dr Singh’s flawed legacy related to the disastrous power sector reforms. He was a strong votary of the World Bank-inspired idea of unbundling the power utilities into three separate entities that handled generation, transmission, and distribution. This idea sought to privatise generation and distribution, and to create markets out of transmission grids (Purkayastha 2016). The project began with a spectacular failure: the Enron project in Dabhol, Maharashtra. In the years that followed, even as overall power generation rose, capacity expansion was delayed, electricity prices paid by consumers rose, and distribution companies in the States (DISTCOMS) were faced with large financial burdens.

Dr Singh also took the big step in 2007–08 of signing the Indo–US nuclear deal, at the cost of his government losing the support of the Left parties. Though the deal was touted as a game changer for India’s energy security, the fact remains that not a single MW of electricity has been generated till date under its ambit. The actual motive of the deal, as the Left parties pointed out, was not to enhance nuclear power generation or energy security, but to move India closer to the geopolitical orbit of the US. The deal was a ruse to remove a domestic obstacle for the US in absorbing India – a new nuclear power – into its imperialist designs in Asia, particularly vis-à-vis China’s growth.

Democratic Deficits

There is no direct line from neoliberalism to fascism. However, the outright failure of neoliberal policies the world over has alienated the people and opened up spaces in the political sphere that are quickly occupied by neo-fascistic forces. India is a case in point. In his personal capacity, Dr Singh may have been a secular man, but the failures of the regime he helmed between 2009 and 2014, especially after the withdrawal of Left support, allowed the communal forces to turn the economic downturn to their advantage, culminating in the victory of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the 2014 national elections. The neo-fascistic regime of the BJP after 2014 has used the very legislations that Dr Singh’s government passed – including amendments to the notorious Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act of 1976 or the UAPA – to terrorise political opponents and religious minorities.

It must be remembered that it was under Dr Singh’s prime ministership that the UAPA was “strengthened” to reinstate the provisions of notorious (though lapsed) legislations like the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act of 1985 or TADA, and the Prevention of Terrorism Act of 2002 or POTA. These provisions, which were directly violative of the recommendations of the United Nations on human rights and fundamental freedoms, allowed search, seizure, and arrest without warrant; detention without charge up to 180 days; prohibition on granting of bail; presumption of guilt even when there was no evidence of criminal intent but just inculpatory evidence; secret witnesses; and an expanded definition of terrorism. These human rights restrictions in turn were enthusiastically picked up and broadened by the BJP-led NDA government, making for the arrest and detention of hundreds of persons in jails for extended periods of time.

Dr Singh and his party, the Congress, believed that the return of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) to power sans the Left parties in 2009 would yield electoral dividends. By cleansing itself of all Left and progressive support, it reaffirmed its commitment to neoliberalism and a stronger alliance with imperialism. This confidence soon turned to hubris and, eventually, became the undoing of Dr Singh’s government. The negative outcome of the neoliberal agenda pushed by his regime, the ultranationalist demands of the security establishment, and the inability of the government to control rampant public corruption together created an acute sense of alienation among large sections of the people by the end of Dr Singh’s second tenure. Amid a retreating state and advancing market forces, and the inequalities they fostered, the poor and the working people felt disempowered. The growth of corruption generated discontent with democratic institutions. This was the context in which the Hindutva right grew in the Indian polity. Hindutva’s right-wing populism formulated and disseminated a critique that attacked the elite even while promoting unaccountable corporate power. It advanced slogans of cultural nationalism, assertions of indigeneity, and even agendas of “decolonisation.” In a situation where the political effectiveness of the state had been drained, the so-called liberals like Dr Singh could only watch in despair and helplessness as right-wing populism captured power and manifested as an authoritarian government after 2014.

The obituaries and commentaries written in memory of Dr Singh portray him as essentially an honourable man, a man of dignity and reason, who did his best with the pack of cards he was dealt. This is utterly false. Dr Singh was no unconscious tool of history. “There is no alternative” was his shrewd response to the critics of his economic reform agenda, an agenda that decisively set back the Indian economy while inflicting high human and social costs on the vast majority of the population. His legacy, especially the part of it drawn from the years between 1991 and 2014, is thus deeply problematic. To present a celebratory one-sided narrative of the legacy of Dr Singh is to obliterate the central role he played in a discredited phase of economic history and to prevent the learning of much-needed lessons. Indeed, Dr Singh himself made no attempt at course correction and instead studiously ignored the disastrous unravelling of the effects of his policies. Though a self-proclaimed secularist, Dr Singh and his economic vision opened the political spaces that the Hindutva Right occupied with alacrity. What his successor regime is administering and delivering is Manmohanomics that is ever-more slavish to domestic and foreign capital, with the added venom of Hindutva in the mix.