Dr Manmohan Singh Biography
Dr. Manmohan Singh, the 14th Prime Minister of India, served at the PMO from 22 May 2004 till 17 May 2014. He was preceded by Atal Behari Vajpayee and is likely to be succeeded by Narendra Modi of the Bharatiya Janata Party. He was the first Sikh Prime Minister of India.
He also holds the distinction of being the first Prime Minister who has never been elected to the Lok Sabha. He revitalized India's economy from near bankruptcy in 1991 by abolishing the License Raj thereby liberalizing it to attract Foreign Direct Investment and private businesses.
Dr. Manmohan Singh was born on 26 September 1932 in Gah, Punjab, in present-day Pakistan. His educational qualifications in economics comprise a master's degree from Punjab University (1954), an undergraduate degree from Cambridge University and a doctorate degree from Oxford University.
Dr. Singh, an economist by profession, served in the International Monetary Fund. He is acclaimed world wide for his work at the United Nations (UN). In the late 1980s, he served as the Governor of Reserve Bank of India. In 1991, he was appointed as the Finance Minister by the Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao. During that period, India's economy was going through a major financial crisis.
Facing a huge deficit in cash reserves needed to run the country, India was preparing to mortgage its gold reserves to the Bank of England. As the Finance Minister, he took the bold step of liberalizing India's economy.
He laid the blueprint of India's shining economy by introducing economic reforms which opened the economy to FDI. License Raj was abolished, thereby promoting the growth of many private businesses both national and multinational.
Awards won by Manmohan Singh
- 1987: Padma Vibhushan
- 1995: Jawaharlal Nehru Birth Centenary Award of the Indian Science Congress
- 1993 and 1994: Asia Money Award for Finance Minister of the Year
- 1993: Euro Money Award for Finance Minister of the Year
- 1956: Adam Smith Prize of the University of Cambridge
- 1955: Wright's Prize for Distinguished Performance, Cambridge
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