Former prime minister Manmohan Singh said while “people say I was a silent prime minister, these volumes speak for themselves, particularly, the one titled 'The Prime Minister Speaks'.” Singh was speaking at the launch of his book titled "Changing India" which comes in six volumes, each edited by distinguished scholars and economists, and published by the Oxford University Press. Singh was in conversation with Kaushik Basu, former economic adviser to the government of India at the event.
With his characteristic straight face, no gesticulating or arm raising, no high decibel, Singh had a distinguished audience, at the India International Centre, with peals of laughter as he elaborated that he was “never afraid of speaking to the press.”
“I always spoke with the media. In the plane on every visit, I spoke with them. On landing, too, I spoke with them,” he said and described how officials were nervous when he decided to address the National Press Club in Washington. “I was never afraid of speaking,” he said to thunderous applause.
It was as political as it could get, with none missing the point that Singh was targetting Prime Minister Narendra Modi who has shied away from addressing the media, and taking questions in the process.
The former prime minister revealed that he was not only an “accidental prime minister”—the title of a book on him by his former media adviser Sanjaya Baru—but was also an accidental finance minister.
“I was not the first choice of P.V. Narasimha Rao. He wanted I.G. Patel, who declined the job and then P.C. Alexander had suggested my name. But I was the chairman of the UGC, and in my office, when Rao called, and asked where I was. I told him I am at UGC. He asked if I had not heard from Alexander. I replied I had not taken it seriously. He asked me to get dressed for the swearing in and reach quickly. So I was an accidental finance minister, too,” he said.
Singh had told Rao that they would have to take tough decisions. Rao had promised full freedom to Singh. “If all goes well we will all take the credit, if things go wrong, you will take the blame,” Singh quoted Rao as having told him.
Singh, as finance minister, had wanted the devaluation decision to be cleared without it going to the cabinet, and he wanted to implement it in two phases. “That is how it happened. But the prime minister backed out when it came to the second phase. I called the governor of the RBI to convey the PM's view... but he said it had already been done!”
Manmohan Singh recalled the political nature of his work during the early days of his career, and said when there were murmers against some of his ideas, he would tell them he was merely doing what late Rajiv Gandhi would have done. “You have read the Congress manifesto better than us,” was what one minister had replied back then.
From his work in the Morarji Desai government onward, Singh described his political journey as “incidents of life, I have enjoyed working with all of them... Life has been smooth sailing, with some good luck and a lot of hard work.”
The transcript of his almost an hour-long response to two or three questions by Basu, could well read like his autobiography. From his college days in Hoshiarpur, to research in Oxford after a three-year stint at Panjab University in Chandigarh—because of his inability to return the money they had spent on his education in the UK—the former prime minister struck a very positive note of his each move. Far from seeing the Oxford stay as a cultural sock, he saw it as an opportunity to learn at the feet of the best.
The former prime minister ended his interaction on a note of great optimism for India's future, quoting his favourite couplet from Iqbal and expressing confidence that India will become a super power.
