A maker of modern India

Dr Manmohan Singh was that rarity of rarities, a good man in politics. He was never a politician, for he brought to politics a decency and integrity that is unmatched.

- SHIVSHANKAR MENON

Dr Manmohan Singh was that rarity of rarities, a good man in politics. He was never a politician, for he brought to politics a decency and integrity that is unmatched. But he was a leader, and a most uncommon leader at that. A leader who changed India.

Any leader operates between a given past and his vision of the future. MMS had both. He had vast experience of how India and its government worked, and knew how it had become what it had. But equally, he had a vision of what India could be.

As a leader, he was ambitious, not for himself but for India and its people. Not for a small India, divided by religion or language, or afraid of other countries' progress. His was not the short-term election cycle calculation of individual political gain. His was a practical vision of how to better the lives of his fellow citizens.

He was ambitious for an open, democratic, confident India where every Indian has the opportunity for a better life. And he did more to make that possible than most. No Indian leader has done more to pull his fellow citizens out of poverty. If his term as finance minister opened the door to the Indian economy's high growth years, his terms as Prime Minister sought social equity through the Mahatma Gandhi Rural Employment Guarantee Act, 2005. His governments passed landmark legislation, giving Indians the right to food, work, and education. And the Right to Information Act, 2005, gave ordinary Indians transparency in governance.