Manmohan Singh

Manmohan Singh (2012)

Manmohan Singh ( Panjabi ਮਨਮੋਹਨ ਸਿੰਘ Manamohan Siṃgh [ ˈmənmoːɦən ˈsɪ́ŋɡʰ ]; born September 26, 1932 in Gah , Punjab , British India , today Pakistan ) is an Indian politician. He was the Prime Minister of India from 2004 to 2014 .

Life

Manmohan Singh (center) as Minister of Finance in the 1990s

Manmohan Singh with the Indian delegation at the G8 summit in Heiligendamm 2007

Manmohan Singh with President Barack Obama

BRIC Summit 2010 in Brasília - Singh with Dmitri Medvedev , Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva , Hu Jintao

Singh grew up as the child of a peasant family belonging to the religious community of the Sikhs in what is now the Pakistani part of Punjab in what was then British India. After India's independence and partition in 1947, his family fled to the Indian part of the Punjab. He studied economics first at Panjab University in Chandigarh and later as a scholarship holder in England at the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford . In 1958, Singh married the Indian Gursharan Kaur, with whom he has three daughters.

After Singh in 1962 to study with the doctoral degree ( Ph.D. was completed) at Oxford University, he worked from 1966 to 1969 for the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). In the 1970s he was a lecturer at the University of Delhi and worked in the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Finance in New Delhi.

From 1982 to 1985 he was head of the Reserve Bank of India . He also sat on the board of directors of the International Monetary Fund . In 1991 he became Minister of Finance in the PV Narasimha Rao government at a time when the Indian economy was weakening and the national debt was very high. During his time as finance minister, he gained the reputation of a successful economic reformer who liberalized the state-run economy. This made it particularly popular with the rural population. He is considered the father of the Indian economic miracle in the 1990s. In 2001 he co-founded the EuroIndia Center .

Following the general election in India in 2004 , Singh was elected India's 14th Prime Minister since independence from British colonial rule (1947) after the victorious Congress Party's top candidate , Sonia Gandhi , turned down government. On May 22, 2004, his coalition cabinet was sworn in.

Singh's stated main goal was to achieve tangible improvements for the two-thirds of the Indian population who make a living from agriculture. Manmohan Singh belonged to the Sikhs' religious community and was the first non-Hindu to be elected Prime Minister.

In the context of cricket diplomacy , a tentative rapprochement with Pakistan took place under his government .

In 2007, in the face of resurgence of violence by Naxalites and Maoists in India, Singh declared that left-wing extremism was the greatest domestic political threat to his country.

In the parliamentary elections in India in 2009 , the party coalition led by the Congress Party was able to significantly expand its majority, so that Manmohan Singh was re-elected Prime Minister on May 22, 2009. On May 28, 2009 he presented his coalition cabinet to the public .

Singh is a member of the Club of Rome .

At the beginning of January 2014, the 81-year-old Singh announced that he would soon retire from politics. He spoke out in favor of Rahul Gandhi as his successor and warned against a possible takeover of power by Narendra Modi from the Bharatiya Janata Party , which he described as "catastrophic for the country". Following the vote count following the 2014 general election , which brought the Congress party a heavy defeat, Singh resigned from his post as Prime Minister on May 17, 2014. In his short speech on the occasion of his resignation, he thanked the Indian nation and summed up his ten-year tenure:

“[...] my life and tenure in public office are an open book. I have always tried to do my best in serving this great nation of ours. [...] In the last ten years, we as a country have seen many successes and achievements that we should be proud of. Today, India is a far stronger country in every respect than it was a decade ago. [...] As I leave office, my abiding memory will be the love and kindness that I have always received from you. [...] I owe everything to this country, this great land of ours where I, an underprivileged child of Partition, was empowered enough to rise and occupy high office. [...] I firmly believe that the emergence of India as a major powerhouse of the evolving global economy is an idea whose time has come. "

“[…] My life and my time in public office are an open book, and I have always endeavored to serve this great nation of ours to the best of my ability. […] In the last ten years we as a country have seen many successes and achievements that we should be proud of. Today India is in every way a far stronger country than it was a decade ago. […] As I leave my office, I keep thinking of the affection and kindness I have received from you. […] I owe everything to this country […] where I, an underprivileged child of the division , was placed in a position to rise to the highest office. [...] I firmly believe that the idea of developing India into a leading center in the developing global economy will now be realized. "

- Manmohan Singh : Speech on May 20, 2014 on the occasion of his resignation from the office of Prime Minister

criticism

Since 2009, Singh has had to deal with allegations of corruption . In 2010, the mobile phone license scandal became known, with a loss of around 27 billion euros for India. As a result, the then Minister of Communications and Information Technology A. Raja had to appear in court. He is accused of having awarded 85 of 122 licenses well below the usual price. In 2012 Coalgate became known in which Singh is mentioned directly by the Indian Court of Auditors in the report as he is head of the Ministry of Coal . Coalgate even surpassed the scandal surrounding mobile phone licenses with an estimated 207 billion euros in lost government money.