Manmohan Singh Combined Market Liberalism and Nehruvian Welfarism to Craft Modern India’s Economic Vision

Published : Jan 12, 2025 10:02 IST - 5 MINS READ In the tributes paid to Manmohan Singh, he has been described as the architect of economic liberalisation since he was appointed Finance Minister in 1991 by the then Prime Minister, P.V. The right-wing perspective is flawed because the Nehruvian policy regime was not socialist; it was a state capitalism model, and the Manmohan Singh era was not one of unfettered capitalism. The left-wing perspective is wrong because the reforms Manmohan Singh initiated were not a passive acceptance of the IMF-World Bank approach; he had the intellectual power and credibility to make changes to that approach by incorporating in it the pro-poor egalitarian inclinations he inherited from the economics he was trained in at Cambridge and Oxford and from the teachings of Guru Nanak. The formation of Manmohan Singh’s economic vision in the UK was influenced both by Keynesianism and Fabian socialism. His appreciation of Ajit Singh as a person and scholar, even though Ajit Singh had been a sharp critic of the IMF-World Bank approach to economic policy in the developing world, reinforced the understanding Ajit Singh and I had reached over several discussions that although the historical moment of the July 1991 balance of payments crisis in India at which Manmohan Singh made his economic policy contribution made it appear to the broader world that he was a votary of market liberalisation, he was, in fact, a heterodox economist who understood the limitations of the market economy.