Dr Manmohan Singh
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Daman: I spoke to my father a lot about corruption when I was writing this book. He said after he left Delhi School of Economics and entered the ministry of foreign trade, the then minister had a reputation for being corrupt. But my father said without evidence I cannot put a label on him. I thought that was significant. Later on, HM Patel, who my father admired a lot, was falsely accused, humiliated and he resigned from the civil service. My father had a great deal of regret that such a fine civil servant was subjected to this. My father often said the political system does create corruption, elections need money. | Daman: I spoke to my father a lot about corruption when I was writing this book. He said after he left Delhi School of Economics and entered the ministry of foreign trade, the then minister had a reputation for being corrupt. But my father said without evidence I cannot put a label on him. I thought that was significant. Later on, HM Patel, who my father admired a lot, was falsely accused, humiliated and he resigned from the civil service. My father had a great deal of regret that such a fine civil servant was subjected to this. My father often said the political system does create corruption, elections need money. | ||
| − | ==With Narasimha Rao= | + | ==With Narasimha Rao== |
''' Narasimha Rao ‘told Manmohan he would be sacked if things didn’t work out well’''' | ''' Narasimha Rao ‘told Manmohan he would be sacked if things didn’t work out well’''' | ||
Revision as of 12:53, 18 August 2014
This is a collection of articles archived for the excellence of their content.
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Contents |
Daman Singh on father Manmohan Singh
I
Manmohan is funny, gave nicknames to people: Daughter
Daman Singh charts the journey of her parents in her book "Strictly Personal: Manmohan and Gursharan".
Manmohan Singh had joined a pre-medical course as his father wanted him to become a doctor but pulled out after a couple of months, losing interest in the subject, according to a book on the former prime minister by his daughter.
Daman Singh charts the journey of her parents in her book "Strictly Personal: Manmohan and Gursharan", providing new insights into the couple but keeps away from the last 10 years when Singh was heading the UPA government.
She also finds her father to be a funny man saying he has a good sense of humour.
In April 1948, Singh was admitted to Khalsa College in Amritsar.
"Since his father wanted him to become a doctor, he joined the two-year FSc course that would lead to further studies in medicine. After just a couple of months, he dropped out. He had lost interest in becoming a doctor. In fact, he had also lost interest in studying science," Daman writes.
"I didn't have the time to think," the author, who based her book on conversations with her parents and hours spent in libraries and archives, quotes her father as saying.
"I went and joined my father in his shop. I didn't like that either, because I was not treated as an equal. I was treated as an inferior person who ran errands - bringing water, bringing tea. Then I thought I must go back to college. And I entered Hindu College in September 1948," Singh recalls.
Economics was a subject that appealed to him immediately. "I was always interested in issues of poverty, why some countries are poor, why others are rich. And I was told that economics is the subject which asks these questions," Singh tells his daughter.
While studying at Cambridge University, money was the only real problem that bothered Singh, the book, published by HarperCollins India, says.
"His tuition and living expenses came to about 600 pounds a year. The Panjab University scholarship gave him about 160 pounds. For the rest he had to depend on his father. Manmohan was careful to live very stingily. Subsidised meals in the dining hall were relatively cheap at two shillings sixpence," Daman writes.
Former PM Manmohan Singh with Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper. (Reuters file photo)
She says her father never ate out, and seldom indulged in beer or wine yet he would be in crisis if money from home fell short or did not arrive on time.
"When this happened, he skipped meals or got by on a sixpence bar of Cadbury's chocolate," she says.
He also asked a friend to lend him 25 pounds for two years but the friend could send only 3 pounds.
Daman found her father a very funny man. "When in a reflective mood, he sat with an index finger perched on the side of his nose. He was completely helpless about the house and could neither boil an egg, nor switch on the television."
He also had a sense of humour of sorts, she says. "This was evident when he was with friends, even if they were economists. It was comforting to know that he could laugh and crack jokes as well. With us, he rarely did either.
"The lighter side of him is that he liked to give nicknames to people. Unknown to them, one of our uncles was 'John Babu', another was 'Jewel Babu' and a third - to commemorate his pointed turban - was 'Chunj Waley'. My mother was 'Gurudev', and the three of us were 'Kick', Little Noan' and 'Little Ram'. Some of the other names he coined were less charitable," Daman writes.
According to the author, during his college years Singh read voraciously and the broad seep of his reading covered theological critique, social commentary and political ideology.
"Modern Punjabi literature was a special interest and he read in Gurmukhi as well as in Urdu."
Croquet was the most strenuous game he tried his hand at while he was at Cambridge.
He neither rowed nor punted. But he did watch a fair amount of cricket, particularly when Swaranjit Singh, a burly off-spinner who played cricket for the university team 'Light Blues', was on the field. In the company of friends, he would go for the occasional movie at the Arts Theatre, or else to a pub for the odd pint of beer, she says.
Daman says as a public servant, somewhere along the way her father retreated from family affairs and allowed his work to take over his life.
"Every day his office accompanied him home in big cloth bundles that we helped lug out of the car.
"He worked in bed where he sat cross-legged with a pillow on his lap, a stack of files beside him. As he hunched over his papers, inscribing neat squiggles, he would tug his beard and mutter to himself. When he was not working, he was usually preoccupied with a book or else with his thoughts," she says.
II
Dad faced a lot of resistance from within Congres, Manmohan Singh's daughter Daman says
Sagarika Ghose | Aug 5, 2014
At a time when Manmohan Singh's prime ministership has come under the scanner from the books of Sanjaya Baru and Natawar Singh, the former PM's daughter Daman Singh has sprung to her father's defence with her own book, "Strictly Personal, Manmohan and Gursharan". She says her father is not a manipulative politician or a wheeler-dealer.
In an exclusive interview with TOI ahead of the release of her book, Daman reveals many aspects of Manmohan Singh's life. Excerpts:
Manmohan Singh didn't believe in 2009 that Congres was going to win a second term
Daman: Yes he said that in a casual moment. I didn't probe it. But he said that no, no I don't think we are coming back. He seemed to believe so, although it was said in a light hearted way.
The relationship between Manmohan Singh and Narasimha Rao?
Daman: My father got a call from him and overnight he was the FM. He had a month to present the Budget. The economy was in a ghastly mess. Narasimha Rao made it all happen. Without him, my father could not have done anything. The ideas and radical approach came from my father, but it was Rao who made it politically feasible. My father always says it was a minority government that changed the course of India's entire economic policy. My father felt if he had five more years he could have done more.
My father says it is difficult to change things in India unless the system breaks down completely because in a large democracy its only when things reach breaking point that people are willing to change the system. You can't impose radical change from above. There was a lot of resistance to reforms from within the Congres party, he had to constantly explain to people what he was doing. The whole process was very difficult. Narasimha Rao had to steer the party through it.
Was Manmohan Singh attacked from within because he tried to bring change?
Daman: C Subramaniam was someone greatly admired by my father. I discovered while writing my book that Subramaniam pushed the green revolution, but at the political level he was called an agent of America. Radical change is hard to bring about. Subramaniam lost his seat. Pioneers don't get rewarded, pioneers are never remembered.
Was Manmohan Singh unsuited for politics?
Daman: I don't think he is a misfit in politics but manipulative politics does not come to him easily. He's not a wheeler dealer. But he survived, didn't he? Against all odds, against all the doomsayers he survived. He's not a reluctant politician. He enjoys a challenge, he takes risks and does not play safe. In fact, my father is a risk taker.
In 1991, the question was not about joining politics but on whether to become FM or not. Politics came along with the job, it's not as if he joined politics and then got the job. He took an enormous risk in 1991, he risked his entire life's reputation on economic reforms. 1991 was like a war situation.
Has Manmohan Singh’s reputation has been damaged by revelations in the books of Sanjaya Baru and Natwar Singh?
Daman: I haven't read either of the two books. They're not the sort of books I normally read. As far as I can tell Natwar's book is about politics which is not the kind of book am normally interested in reading. I am interested in politics as a process. I wrote this book because I wanted to discover my parents as individuals. And I think they enjoyed talking to me about their life, and reflecting on different parts of their life.
My mother is the power beside him rather than behind him. She's a people person and she has looked after him all her life. Work drives my father, he's a workaholic. Whether FM or RBI governor, he enjoyed all his posts. He had no regrets.
2005-2009 had not given Manmohan Singh’s family anything to laugh about?
Daman: Being PM was a massive responsibility, the amount of stress in a routine situation was enormous. He became PM under some unusual circumstances and he had to hit the ground running. It wasn't something he had been prepared for. The task was more difficult for him than it would be for anybody else ... the suddenness of it. Within days he had put together a team and get the policy framework moving. Then the coalition government had its own challenges. Being a civil servant gives you an insight on how policies are made, how they function, gives you access to information, knowledge, chance to observe how things work but when you are in charge that's an entirely different cup of tea, the responsibility, initiative, so much of it comes from you as one person, aside from of course the entire government machinery.
Did any member of his family ever want him to resign as PM when things got controversial, with all the scams and accusations?
Daman: We may have had our private thoughts but the lines between the political and the personal are very clear in the family. So we never really voiced anything. But we did worry a lot.
It's said the family wanted Manmohan Singh to resign when Rahul forced the cabinet to roll back the ordinance on criminal MPs?
Daman: My father was travelling when it happened, he was in the US. Of course, he was bothered. But that doesn't mean he had to show it. It's not as if he didn't see or hear what was being said about him. A lot of things bothered him. He is as sensitive as you or I. He just doesn't think it necessary to broadcast his feelings.
Did all the accusations and criticisms get to him and hurt the family?
Daman: Even as FM my father experienced an enormous amount of criticism - personal, professional and political. His family has been brought in, his daughters have been brought in that they work in American think tanks, etc. He's weathered it. He has the ability not let it affect him. But I feel very bad about it. I don't read newspapers or TV, I just switch off. But it would get to my son in school and it was very hurtful.
Didn't Manmohan Singh, the economist PM, in the end, fail to create the economy he would have wanted to?
Daman: Since 1981 my father was pushing growth oriented economics. He's never given up. People say he's worked in WB and IMF and my first reaction is get your facts right, he's ever worked in those places. That bothered me. The fact that people said he was toeing the IMF line never bothered me. But he always believed in growth as a way to alleviate poverty and he always knew what he was doing and I am glad he did it. In a specific context he did not go along with the radical shift of Jagdish Bhagwati and Padma Desai, but then the context changed. When he was FM there was need for a radical shift and he carried it out.
Manmohan Singh seemed to have a lot of respect for Indira Gandhi
Daman: Indira Gandhi inspired his respect, based on his personal interaction with her. She was a power house and she spoke to him as an equal. He was a little known civil servant, yet she heard his ideas, took his advice.
Manmohan Singh may have been hurt with Rajiv Gandhi's remark that the Planning Commission was a bunch of jokers
Daman: He wasn't there when it was said. There were a lot of reports in the media that it was directed at my father. Maybe it was a casual remark.
Did Manmohan Singh feel helpless about corruption in the system?
Daman: I spoke to my father a lot about corruption when I was writing this book. He said after he left Delhi School of Economics and entered the ministry of foreign trade, the then minister had a reputation for being corrupt. But my father said without evidence I cannot put a label on him. I thought that was significant. Later on, HM Patel, who my father admired a lot, was falsely accused, humiliated and he resigned from the civil service. My father had a great deal of regret that such a fine civil servant was subjected to this. My father often said the political system does create corruption, elections need money.
With Narasimha Rao
Narasimha Rao ‘told Manmohan he would be sacked if things didn’t work out well’
PTI | Aug 18, 2014 The Times of India
Woken up from his sleep to be informed of the "out of the blue" decision of his appointment as India's finance minister in 1991, Dr Manmohan Singh was jokingly told by Prime Minister Narasimha Rao that he would be sacked if "things didn't work out well".
Singh was asleep when PC Alexander, principal secretary to the Prime Minister, rang him up frantically to convey Rao's decision to appoint him as finance minister.
"The decision was out of the blue", Singh is quoted as having said by his daughter Daman Singh in her book "Strictly Personal: Manmohan and Gursharan", which covers the years prior to his becoming the Prime Minister in 2004. The book is based on Daman's conversations with her parents and hours spent in libraries and archives.
According to Singh, Rao's most important role was that he allowed the process of liberalization and opening up to go ahead, and gave it his full support.
Singh says Rao was first a little sceptic about the liberalization idea and had to be persuaded.
"I had to persuade him. I think he was a sceptic to begin with, but later on he was convinced that what we were doing was the right thing to do, that there was no other way out. But he wanted to sanctify the middle path — that we should undertake liberalization but also take care of the marginalized sections, the poor," recounts Singh.
"He also jokingly told me that if things worked well we would all claim credit, and if things didn't work out well I would be sacked," he said.
Referring to the imposition of Emergency in 1975, Daman says it came as a surprise to her father.
"Well, it was a surprise. There had been unrest, but nobody expected that Mrs Gandhi would go that far," she said.
When his daughter asked him how the Emergency affected the government servants, Singh replied, "I think there was a lot more emphasis on punctuality, on discipline. So some good things happened."
After the Morarji Desai-led Janata Party won a majority and came to power post-Emergency, a number of officers were shunted out but Singh kept his job.
Initially, Singh felt Desai was not quite fond of him. "When Morarji Desai became prime minister he had been told that I was close to the previous government. So he was quite rude to begin with. But after some time, he became very fond of me. Morarji Desai was fairly balanced, although people misunderstand him as a very rigid man. I think on the surface he was rigid, but he was amenable to persuasion," Singh is quoted as saying.
