Manmohan Singh’s policies bore imprint of his far-sighted academics

With the reforms of 1991, former prime minister Manmohan Singh not only pulled India back from the brink of bankruptcy but also helped the country strut the global stage as a rising economic power. A lesser-known fact about the “commanding heights” of India’s socialist-era planning is that the erstwhile Planning Commission worked closely with US and British economists to formulate its early five-year plans. Singh chose India’s export performance as his D. Phil topic, aiming to unpack answers to three questions that would allow the country to achieve, to use Singh’s words, “self-sustaining growth”. Singh’s thesis, “India’s Export Trends and Prospects for Self-Sustained Growth” was an incisive analysis of India’s inward-looking trade policy. An overview of the paper, which made academic headlines, leaves little doubt that “Singh saw trade and tapping of India’s export potential, including in cotton, as a path to sustained growth,” said RK Mani, a retired economist with the Tamil Nadu Agricultural University.