As a student, I had read Dr. Manmohan Singh’s landmark 1991 budget speech and followed with fascination the economic reforms he was unleashing.
Years later, when I joined India’s National Stock Exchange (NSE) as a graduate trainee, I witnessed firsthand the implementation of his visionary reforms that were reshaping the nation’s financial landscape.
What struck me most was not just the scale of transformation, but the values and principles of the remarkable economist who had set it all in motion.
As part of his unprecedented reforms agenda, Dr. Singh actively encouraged the establishment of a slew of modern institutions such as a securities market regulator (Securities Exchange Board of India, SEBI) and many securities market institutions such as the NSE (National Stock Exchange). NSE, which I might describe as a “public sector startup” was built within three short years as a modern, electronic, national securities exchange to compete with the incumbent old boys’ clubs such as the stodgy 120-year-old exchange (BSE) in which brokers exercised a clear conflict of interest at that time.

Subsequently, NSE was used as a beachhead to establish a string of downstream institutions – a clearing house that assured the integrity of all transactions (National Securities Clearing Corporation Ltd, NSCCL); a depository that extinguished the share certificates and paper trails and digitised the market process and ensured better custody (National Securities Depository Ltd NSDL), a commodities and metals exchange (National Commodities and Derivatives Exchange, NCDEX), and NSE.IT to provide IT and data services.
All of these met – and exceeded – the global best practice.
Later as Assistant Manager and Senior Executive Officer across various subsidiaries, I observed directly how these institutions transformed India’s capital markets.
Today of course, NSE has become a synonym for Indian capital markets.
As Prime Minister many years later, Dr. Singh took a holistic approach to solve the country’s financial problems and bring about economic reforms.
He did this by divesting some of the unnecessary public sector enterprises, and also by opening up crucial sectors such as insurance, airlines, telecommunications and media, and removing constraints in manufacturing, IT services and foreign exchange.
Early life and entry to politics
Born in a remote, undeveloped village, Dr. Manmohan Singh went to the local school before his family was uprooted during the partition in 1947. Arriving as a refugee in a new country in his youth, he rose to attend the state’s University before achieving an Oxbridge education culminating with a PhD from Oxford.
After beginning an academic career with some of India’s most prestigious universities, he chose to practice his knowledge of theory. As a result, he occupied the top posts in the country’s economic management bureaucracy – Finance Secretary, Planning Commission Deputy Chair, Economic Adviser to the PM, and Reserve Bank Governor.

Called from retirement to become Finance Minister in 1991 during a major financial crisis, he seized the opportunity to push through major economic reforms and liberalisation. When his party regained power in 2004, he was invited to lead his country as Prime Minister.
He navigated his country through the Global Financial Crisis while achieving the highest growth rates the country had ever seen, fixed strained foreign relations, and provided rights to education, information, food, and employment. Even after an undeserved defeat in 2014, he fought back against false charges, defended his legacy and continued as an important counsel to his party leaders.
Legacy
Even to someone of extraordinary capacities, achieving only one, or at most two of the above will be considered an exceptionally high achievement of a lifetime. But Dr. Manmohan Singh achieved each of the above accomplishments and then “more”.
This “more” cannot be ignored because it describes how he achieved all the above – his processes, his boundaries and his values. His honesty and personal integrity inspired many to emulate him in a country which routinely lists at the bottom of corruption indexes. He respected and worked within the structures and rules of the institutions including those of his department, his political party, the government and the parliament. He preferred to persuade and gain support to change the rules and structures democratically, not overrule or ignore them to get the job done.

Dr. Singh built consensus and worked with teams that he trusted, but he ensured that any of his colleagues accused of wrongdoing faced the full force of the law. Some ministers in his cabinet were charged and they went to jail.
He was not wedded to a fixed ideology. He was often considered a socialist, but he defined his socialism as one that promotes equality and provides relief, succour and opportunity. A socialist indeed who established more capitalist institutions than anyone else! His apparently elite capital markets democratised economic opportunity and co-existed with his Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGA) which guaranteed minimum work and wages to the poorest of the poor. This program and the other rights that he legislated proved their worth years later when millions of poor received dignified support during the pandemic.

As a reformist finance minister in the 1990s, Dr. Singh opened up massive opportunities for the middle class to aspire for brand new roles in the newly opened up industries. And as the prime minister during the mid 2000s to early 2010s, Doctor sahab focused on foreign relations, economic growth and the rights of the poor and the disadvantaged in which the change is much less visible but far more profound.
How could one achieve so much, and yet be so outwardly gentle and soft-spoken? His voice came through loud and clear when it mattered, answering upwards of 60 mostly hostile questions in his typical impromptu press conferences, which were so open almost any accredited journalist could enter and subject him to a grilling.
Barack Obama was right on the dot when he said that when Dr. Manmohan Singh speaks, the world listens.
Dr. Manmohan Singh will be an inspiration for many generations.
READ MORE: Dr Manmohan Singh: Former prime minister dies aged 92