I met ‘Uncle’ for the first time, when he visited his daughter and son-in-law’s quarters in our College.
His daughter, Dr Upinder Singh, was among my favourite history professors at St. Stephen’s College, Delhi. To our surprise, Dr Manmohan Singh insisted we refer to him at best as ‘uncle’ or ‘dada’ rather than constantly evoking the formal ‘Dr Singh’ or ‘Sir’ terminology!
He came across as a passionate teacher (little disappointingly, not a storyteller like other Sardar uncles we knew) and always spoke like a scholar - with an impeccable vocabulary. In all, he was a diplomat in a league of his own and a true ‘statesman’ compared to the lumpen elements around now. He never made us feel that he was the (then former) Finance Minister of India.
Much later, between 2004-2014, I must have met him at least half a dozen times when he was the Prime Minister, on different issues - ranging from land acquisition policy to forest rights and fisheries issues. It didn’t take more than one reminder in the first of those meetings for him to recall me, his daughter’s old student, and I could see the warmth on his face - the ‘uncle’ was back.
Even when I passionately challenged him in one of our conversations (and I quoted that later in our research publication on the issue of the arrest of Indian fisher people by Pakistani marine forces and vice versa), he never let his immediate emotions take over to put me in my place.
I was surely expecting the PM of India to dismiss or ignore my arguments! Instead he passionately listened to a nobody’s criticism and turned around to the secretary asking him to make note of my point and give him a detailed briefing later.
Dr Singh was surely very passionate about economics, a brand of economics that I would think has been slow-poisoning the world - ‘capitalism’. Many may not put him in that category due to the confusion caused in its structural implementation in India where capitalism got confused with Nehruvian socialism, a sweet cover that pushed an honest man like Dr Singh to call it out and discard the latter.
It was and will be difficult to agree with many of his policy directives but one always respected his intentions that incited those experimentations. He truly believed that institutions like the World Bank could help the world out of poverty and inequality.
His fierce belief in the Forest Rights Act made the historic legislation come through. Probably he was among the rare people in his party who believed in such a legislation and its political potential! Only he could have backed the passing of similar empowerment legislations with such clarity.
He was a brilliant administrator and a silent operator! Many in his party didn’t like the way he gave ears to the National Advisory Council or the competent members of the Planning Commission!
I don’t think he cared much when his ideological enemies ridiculed him as a ‘mouni baba’. He knew what his mission was and he went about doing it without any brouhaha. He stood firm on his convictions and I am sure people may criticise him for losing his grip on administration post the 2010-11 phase.
I personally think he became very emotionally affected after a point and started caving in! Instances like the Nirbhaya incident really rattled him and so did the betrayal of many chieftains of his own party--many who have jumped sides now.
A truly Secular, democratic visionary with unmatched scholarly inputs on growth and prosperity, he made an honest Prime Minister, none of which can be said about our current prime minister. Sadly, it took a Narendra Modi for Indians to realise how great a prime minister Dr Manmohan Singh was.
Good by Uncle Singh… Proud to have known a legendary human like you.
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