A gentle but effective leader

Dr Manmohan Singh passed away on December 26, and his loss has inspired a wide range of tributes for a political leader distinguished by his integrity, humility, deep understanding of the economy, and achievements as both finance minister and long-standing Prime Minister.

- NITIN DESAI

He grew up in a poor family in Punjab and was, I think, the first person in his family to attend university and scholarship supported higher education in the UK. He had an extraordinary working life as an academic and a bureaucrat, but his most significant national contributions came during his tenure as the finance minister under Narasimha Rao and later as the prime minister by the Congress Party at the suggestion of Sonia Gandhi.

I first met him in 1971, when he was serving as economic advisor in the Ministry of Commerce. He was an early advocate of India placing greater emphasis on export development, which is reflected in his 1962 DPhil thesis at Oxford and his later book India's Export Trends and Prospects for Self-Sustained Growth. In some ways, this academic perspective is reflected in the path-breaking changes he engineered in July 1992.