Portrait of a technocrat as

A leader who unleashed economic reforms that laid the foundation of India's future

- AK BHATTACHARYA

Few Indians in the field of public policymaking have achieved what Manmohan Singh did in his long and distinguished career as a technocrat. For a quarter century, from 1971 to 1996, he held virtually all the important positions in the sphere of economic policymaking in the Union government. That was not all. Just eight years later, he became India's 14th prime minister with an uninterrupted tenure of 10 years, making him the country's third-longest serving head of the Union government.

Starting off as an economic advisor in the Ministry of Foreign Trade at a time when India was struggling to get out of an inward-looking trade policy, he went on to become the chief economic advisor in the finance ministry, before heading its economic affairs department as secretary. He would also steer the secretariat of the Planning Commission as its member-secretary and later as its deputy chairman, advise the prime minister of India on economic affairs and chair the University Grants Commission (UGC).

And then in 1991, amidst India's unprecedented economic crisis, he became the country's 22nd finance minister, and unleashed a series of economic reforms that laid the foundation of India's future growth and development.

In between were two equally important stints, each for about three years. One was at home as the governor of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI); the other was in Geneva as secretary-general and commissioner of the South Commission, which laid the ground and set the principles for strengthening south-south cooperation.

No less important were his academic credentials as a student and a teacher of economics. A first class in the matriculation examination held by the Panjab University in 1948 was just the beginning. He topped the Panjab University in three successive examinations (Intermediate, BA Economics Honours and MA Economics), followed by a first class honours in Economics Tripos from Cambridge University in 1957.