Manmohan Singh is an Indian politician, economist, academician and bureaucrat who served as the 13th Prime Minister of India from 2004 to 2014. He is the third longest-serving prime minister after Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi. A member of the Indian National Congress, Singh was the first Sikh prime minister of India. He was also the first prime minister since Jawaharlal Nehru to be re-elected after completing a full five-year term.

Born in Gah, West Punjab, in what is today Pakistan, Singh's family migrated to India during its partition in 1947. After obtaining his doctorate in economics from Oxford, Singh worked for the UN during 1966–1969. He subsequently began his bureaucratic career when Lalit Narayan Mishra hired him as an advisor in the Ministry of Commerce and Industry. During the 1970s and 1980s, Singh held several key posts in the Government of India, such as Chief Economic Advisor (1972–1976), governor of the Reserve Bank (1982–1985) and head of the Planning Commission (1985–1987).

Early life and education

Singh was born to Gurmukh Singh and Amrit Kaur on 26 September 1932, in Gah, Punjab, British India, into a Sikh family. He lost his mother when he was very young and was raised by his paternal grandmother, to whom he was very close. His early schooling was in the Urdu medium, and even as Prime Minister years later, he wrote his apparently Hindi speeches in the Urdu script, although sometimes he would also use Gurmukhi, a script used to write Punjabi, his mother tongue.

After the Partition of India, his family migrated to Amritsar, India, where he studied at Hindu College, Amritsar. He attended Panjab University, then in Hoshiarpur, Punjab, studying Economics and got his bachelor's and master's degrees in 1952 and 1954, respectively, standing first throughout his academic career. He completed his Economics Tripos at University of Cambridge in 1957. He was a member of St John's College.

After Cambridge, Singh returned to India and served as a teacher at Panjab University. In 1960, he went to the University of Oxford for his DPhil, where he was a member of Nuffield College. His 1962 doctoral thesis under the supervision of I.M.D. Little was titled "India's export performance, 1951–1960, export prospects and policy implications", and was later the basis for his book "India's Export Trends and Prospects for Self-Sustained Growth".

Family and personal life

Singh married Gursharan Kaur in 1958. They have three daughters, Upinder Singh, Daman Singh and Amrit Singh. Upinder Singh is a professor of history at Ashoka University. She has written six books, including Ancient Delhi (1999) and A History of Ancient and Early Medieval India (2008). Daman Singh is a graduate of St. Stephen's College, Delhi and Institute of Rural Management, Anand, Gujarat, and author of The Last Frontier: People and Forests in Mizoram and a novel Nine by Nine, Amrit Singh is a staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union. Ashok Pattnaik, 1983 batch Indian Police Service officer, son-in-law of former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, was appointed CEO of National Intelligence Grid (NATGRID) in 2016.

Singh has undergone multiple cardiac bypass surgeries, the most recent of which took place in January 2009.

Political career

In June 1991, India's prime minister at the time, P. V. Narasimha Rao, chose Singh to be his finance minister. Singh told Mark Tully the British journalist in 2005 "On the day (Rao) was formulating his cabinet, he sent his Principal Secretary to me saying, 'The PM would like you to become the Minister of Finance'. I didn't take it seriously. He eventually tracked me down the next morning, rather angry, and demanded that I get dressed up and come to Rashtrapati Bhavan for the swearing in. So that's how I started in politics".

Minister of Finance

In 1991, India's fiscal deficit was close to 8.5 per cent of the gross domestic product, the balance of payments deficit was huge and the current account deficit was close to 3.5 percent of India's GDP. India's foreign reserves barely amounted to US$1 billion, enough to pay for 2 weeks of imports, in comparison to US$600 billion today.

Evidently, India was facing an economic crisis. At this point, the government of India sought funds from the supranational International Monetary Fund, which, while assisting India financially, imposed several conditions regarding India's economic policy. In effect, IMF-dictated policy meant that the ubiquitous Licence Raj had to be dismantled, and India's attempt at a state-controlled economy had to end.

Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha

Singh was first elected to the upper house of Parliament, the Rajya Sabha, in 1991 by the legislature of the state of Assam, and was re-elected in 1995, 2001, 2007 and 2013. From 1998 to 2004, while the Bharatiya Janata Party was in power, Singh was the Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha. In 1999, he contested for the Lok Sabha from South Delhi but was unable to win the seat.

Post-premiership (2014–present)

Singh's premiership officially ended at noon on 17 May 2014. He did not contest the 2014 general election for the 16th Lok Sabha as the prime ministeral candidate. Singh resigned his post as prime minister, after the Bharatiya Janata Party led National Democratic Alliance won the 2014 Lok Sabha election. He served as the acting prime minister till 25 May 2014, when Narendra Modi was sworn in as the new prime minister. Singh along with Congress president Sonia Gandhi, former Presidents A. P. J. Abdul Kalam and Pratibha Patil, Vice President Hamid Ansari attended Narendra Modi's swearing-in ceremony. After the swearing-in ceremony Singh shifted to 3 Motilal Nehru Road, New Delhi. In 2016 it was announced that Singh was to take up a position at Panjab University as the Jawaharlal Nehru Chair, which he eventually never did.

Degrees and posts held

B.A (Honours) in Economics 1952; M.A (First Class) in Economics, 1954 Panjab University, Chandigarh (then in Hoshiarpur, Punjab), India
Honours degree in Economics, University of Cambridge – St John's College (1957)
Senior Lecturer, Economics (1957–1959)
Reader (1959–1963)
Professor (1963–1965)
Professor of International Trade (1969–1971)
DPhil in Economics, University of Oxford – Nuffield College (1962)
Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi
Honorary Professor (1966)
Chief, Financing for Trade Section, UNCTAD, United Nations Secretariat, New York
1966 : Economic Affairs Officer 1966
Economic Adviser, Ministry of Foreign Trade, India (1971–1972)
Chief Economic Adviser, 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)
Board of Governors, Asian Development Bank, Manila
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)
Secretary General, South Commission, Geneva (1987–1990)
Advisor to Prime Minister of India on Economic Affairs (1990–1991)
Chairman, University Grants Commission (15 March 1991 – 20 June 1991)[4]
Finance Minister of India, (21 June 1991 – 15 May 1996)
Member of Parliament in the Rajya Sabha (1 October 1991 – 14 June 2019)
Leader of the Opposition (India) in the Rajya Sabha (1998–2004)
Prime Minister of India (22 May 2004 – 26 May 2014)
Member of Parliament in the Rajya Sabha (19 August 2019 – Present)

Honours, awards and international recognition

In March 1983, Panjab University awarded him Doctor of Letters and in 2009 created a Dr. Manmohan Singh chair in their economics department. In 1997, the University of Alberta awarded him an honorary Doctor of Law degree. The University of Oxford awarded him an honorary Doctor of Civil Law degree in July 2005, and in October 2006, the University of Cambridge followed with the same honour. St. John's College further honoured him by naming a PhD Scholarship after him, the Dr. Manmohan Singh Scholarship. In 2008, he was awarded honorary Doctor of Letters degree by Benaras Hindu University and later that year he was awarded an honorary doctorate degree by University of Madras. In 2010, he was awarded honorary doctorate degree by King Saud University and in 2013, he was awarded honorary doctorate degree by Moscow State Institute of International Relations.[106] In 2017 awarded Indira Gandhi Prize for Peace, Disarmament and Development.

He has also received honorary doctorates from University of Bologna, University of Jammu and Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee.

State honors

Decoration		Country	Date	Note	Ref.
	Order of the Paulownia Flowers	Japan	5 November 2014	Grand Cordon of the Order of the Paulownia Flowers
	Padma Vibhushan	India	1987	The second-highest civilian award of India
	Order of Abdulaziz Al Saud	Saudi Arabia	28 February 2010	Special Class, the highest honour of Saudi Arabia awarded to non-Muslim dignitarie

In popular culture

A Bollywood film was made in 2019 based on Singh's life, titled The Accidental Prime Minister directed by Vijay Gutte and written by Mayank Tewari. The film was based on the 2014 memoir of the same name by Sanjaya Baru with Anupam Kher in the titular role.

Pradhanmantri, a 2013 Indian documentary television series which aired on ABP News and covers the various policies and political tenures of Indian PMs, includes the tenureship of Manmohan Singh in the episodes "Story of Sonia Gandhi and UPA-I Government", and "Scams in UPA government and anti-corruption movement".