Age, Biography, and Wiki
Manmohan Singh was born on September 26, 1932, making him 92 years old at the time of his death on December 26, 2024. He served as the Prime Minister of India from 2004 to 2014, following his tenure as Finance Minister under the government of PV Narasimha Rao. His biography is detailed on his Wikipedia page.
| Occupation | Prime Ministers |
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| Date of Birth | 26 September 1932 |
| Age | 92 Years |
| Birth Place | Gah, Punjab Province, British India (present-day Punjab, Pakistan) |
| Horoscope | Libra |
| Country | Pakistan |
| Date of death | 26 December, 2024 |
| Died Place | New Delhi, India |
Height, Weight & Measurements
There is no detailed information available regarding Manmohan Singh's height, weight, or measurements in the provided sources.
Conversely, Time magazine's Asia edition for 10–17 July 2012, on its cover remarked that Singh was an "underachiever". It stated that Singh appears "unwilling to stick his neck out" on reforms that will put the country back onto a growth path. Congress spokesperson Manish Tewari rebutted the charges. UPA ally Lalu Prasad Yadav took issue with the magazine's statements. Praising the government, Prasad said UPA projects [were] doing well and asked, "What will America say as their own economy is shattered?". Additionally, Singh faced negative reception following the 2008 Mumbai attacks for falling short on enhancing national security.
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Dating & Relationship Status
Manmohan Singh was married to Gursharan Kaur, and they had three daughters together. His personal life was marked by a strong family bond, and all his daughters are well-educated and work in prestigious positions.
Singh was initially educated at a local gurdwara, where he began studying Urdu and Punjabi. On 17 April 1937, he was enrolled in the local Government Primary School, where he continued his Urdu-medium education until the age of 10 (Class 4), after which he and his family moved to Peshawar. There, Singh was enrolled in the upper-primary Khalsa School. He sat for his matriculation examination in the summer of 1947. Even as prime minister years later, Singh 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.
Following the 2012 Delhi gang rape and murder, Singh appealed for calm, stressing that "violence will serve no purpose". In a televised address, he assured that all possible efforts would be made to ensure the safety of women in India. Singh expressed empathy, saying: "As a father of three daughters I feel as strongly about the incident as each one of you". As a tribute to the victim, the prime minister cancelled all his official events to celebrate the new year.
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| Husband | Gursharan Kaur (m. 1958) |
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Net Worth and Salary
Manmohan Singh's net worth was estimated to be approximately $3 million at the time of his death. In Indian currency, his total assets were valued at Rs 15.77 crore. His annual income for 2018-19 was around Rs 90 lakh.
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 per cent of India's GDP. India's foreign reserves barely amounted to US$1billion, enough to pay for 2 weeks of imports, in comparison to US$600 billion in 2009.
The Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013 was passed on 29 August 2013 in the Lok Sabha (lower house of the Indian parliament) and on 4 September 2013 in Rajya Sabha (upper house of the Indian parliament). The bill received the assent of the President of India, Pranab Mukherjee on 27 September 2013. The Act came into force from 1 January 2014.
Career, Business, and Investments
- Prime Minister of India: Manmohan Singh served two terms as Prime Minister, from 2004 to 2009 and again from 2009 to 2014. During his tenure, India experienced significant economic growth.
- Finance Minister: Under PV Narasimha Rao, he introduced landmark economic reforms in 1991, transforming India's economy from a closed socialist system to a more open market-based economy.
- Investments: He had investments and deposits worth Rs 3.46 crore in his SBI account in 2013. Additionally, he owned properties in Delhi and Chandigarh, valued at approximately Rs 7.27 crore in 2018-19.
Born in Gah in what is today Pakistan, Singh's family migrated to India during its partition in 1947. After obtaining his doctorate in economics from the University of Oxford, Singh worked for the United Nations 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). In 1991, under prime minister, P. V. Narasimha Rao, Singh was appointed as finance minister. Over the next few years, despite strong opposition, he carried out several structural reforms that liberalised India's economy. It enhanced Singh's reputation globally as a leading reform-minded economist. Subsequently, Singh was leader of the opposition in the Rajya Sabha (the upper house of the Parliament of India) during the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government of 1998–2004.
After the Partition of India, his family migrated to Haldwani, India. In 1948 they relocated to Amritsar, 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.
Subsequently, Singh, who had thus far been one of the most influential architects of India's socialist economy, eliminated the license raj (which inhibited the prosperity of private businesses), reduced state control of the economy, and reduced import taxes. Rao and Singh thus implemented policies to open up the economy and change India's socialist economy to a more capitalistic one. They removed many obstacles standing in the way of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) and initiated the process of the privatisation of public sector companies. However, in spite of these reforms, Rao's government was voted out in 1996 due to non-performance of government in other areas. In praise of Singh's work that pushed India towards a market economy, long-time cabinet minister P. Chidambaram has compared Singh's role in India's reforms to Deng Xiaoping's in China.
Singh's government continued the Golden Quadrilateral and the highway modernisation program that was initiated by Vajpayee's government. Singh also worked on reforming the banking and financial sectors, as well as public sector companies. The Finance ministry worked towards relieving farmers of their debt and worked towards pro-industry policies. In 2005, Singh's government introduced the value added tax, replacing sales tax. In 2007 and early 2008, the Great Recession impacted India.
Singh married Gursharan Kaur in 1958. They had three daughters, Upinder Singh, Daman Singh and Amrit Singh. Upinder Singh is a professor of history at Ashoka University. 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. Singh's son-in-law, Ashok Pattnaik, a 1983 batch Indian Police Service officer, was appointed CEO of National Intelligence Grid (NATGRID) in 2016.
Social Network
Manmohan Singh was not known for having an active social media presence. His influence was largely through his political and economic legacy rather than social networking platforms.
In 1972, Singh was chief economic adviser in the Ministry of Finance, and in 1976 he was secretary in the Finance Ministry. In 1980–1982 he was at the Planning Commission, and in 1982, he was appointed governor of the Reserve Bank of India under then finance minister Pranab Mukherjee and held the post until 1985. He went on to become the deputy chairman of the Planning Commission (India) from 1985 to 1987. Following his tenure at the Planning Commission, he was secretary general of the South Commission, an independent economic policy think tank headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland from 1987 to November 1990.
Singh returned to India from Geneva in November 1990 and held the post as the advisor to Prime Minister of India on economic affairs during the tenure of Chandra Shekar. In March 1991, he became chairman of the University Grants Commission.
"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[.]"
In 1993, Singh offered his resignation from the post of Finance Minister after a parliamentary investigation report criticised his ministry for not being able to anticipate a US$1.8billion 1992 securities scandal. Prime Minister Rao refused Singh's resignation, instead promising to punish the individuals directly accused in the scandal.
Relations improved with Japan and European Union countries, like the United Kingdom, France, and Germany. Relations with Iran continued and negotiations over the Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline have taken place. New Delhi hosted an India–Africa Summit in April 2006 which was attended by the leaders of 15 African states. Relations have improved with other developing countries, particularly Brazil and South Africa. Singh carried forward the momentum which was established after the "Brasilia Declaration" in 2003 and the IBSA Dialogue Forum was formed.
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 ministerial candidate. He resigned his post as prime minister after the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance won the election. He served as the acting prime minister till 26 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, and Vice-President Hamid Ansari attended Modi's swearing-in ceremony. In 2016, it was announced that Singh was to take up a position at Panjab University as the Jawaharlal Nehru Chair, which he eventually did not. He was elected as the Rajya Sabha MP for Rajasthan in 2019, succeeding BJP MP Madan Lal Saini. Singh retired from the Rajya Sabha in April 2024 and was succeeded by Sonia Gandhi.
Political opponents, including BJP co-founder L. K. Advani, have claimed that Singh is a "weak" prime minister. Advani declared "He is weak. What do I call a person who can't take his decisions until 10 Janpath gives instruction." Arvind Kejriwal in 2018 said the people are "missing an educated PM like Dr Manmohan Singh". In 2022, Union Transport Minister of Modi Government, Nitin Gadkari said the "country is indebted to Manmohan Singh for the liberalisation that gave a new direction".
Pradhanmantri (lit. 'Prime Minister'), a 2013 Indian documentary television series which aired on ABP News and covers the various policies and political tenures of Indian PMs, includes the tenure of Manmohan Singh in the episodes "Story of Sonia Gandhi and UPA-I Government", and "Scams in UPA government and anti-corruption movement".
Education
Manmohan Singh is a highly educated individual. He holds degrees from the University of Cambridge and the University of Oxford. His educational background includes:
- St. John's College, Cambridge: He studied economics and was a student of the renowned economist Joan Robinson.
- Nuffield College, Oxford: He earned his D.Phil. in international trade from Oxford.
"I first became conscious of the creative role of politics in shaping human affairs, and I owe that mostly to my teachers Joan Robinson and Nicholas Kaldor. Joan Robinson was a brilliant teacher, but she also sought to awaken the inner conscience of her students in a manner that very few others were able to achieve. She questioned me a great deal and made me think the unthinkable. She propounded the left wing interpretation of Keynes, maintaining that the state has to play more of a role if you really want to combine development with social equity. Kaldor influenced me even more; I found him pragmatic, scintillating, stimulating. Joan Robinson was a great admirer of what was going on in China, but Kaldor used the Keynesian analysis to demonstrate that capitalism could be made to work."
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 Ian 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".
After completing his D. Phil., Singh returned to India. He was a senior lecturer of economics at Panjab University from 1957 to 1959. During 1959 and 1963, he served as a reader in economics at Panjab University, and from 1963 to 1965, he was an economics professor there. Then he went to work for the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) from 1966 to 1969. Later, he was appointed as an advisor to the Ministry of Foreign Trade by Lalit Narayan Mishra, in recognition of Singh's talent as an economist.
In 2005, Prime Minister Singh and his government's health ministry started the National Rural Health Mission (NHRM), which mobilised half a million community health workers. This rural health initiative was praised by the American economist Jeffrey Sachs. In 2006, his Government implemented the proposal to reserve 27% of seats in All India Institute of Medical Studies (AIIMS), Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) and other central institutions of higher education for Other Backward Classes which led to 2006 Indian anti-reservation protests.
On 2 July 2009, Singh ministry introduced the Right to Education Act (RTE) act. Eight IITs were opened in the states of Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Gujarat, Orissa, Punjab, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Himachal Pradesh. The Singh government also continued the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan program. The program includes the introduction and improvement of mid-day meals and the opening of schools all over India, especially in rural areas, to fight illiteracy.
Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act was enacted on 4 August 2009, which describes the modalities of the importance of free and compulsory education for children between 6 and 14 in India under Article 21A of the Indian Constitution. India became one of 135 countries to make education a fundamental right of every child when the act came into force on 1 April 2010.
