India’s former PM Manmohan Singh dies aged 92 | News

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BREAKING,

Singh, 92, governed as India’s 14th Prime Minister from 2004 to 2014.

Former Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who governed the South Asian country for two terms and liberalised its economy in an earlier stint as finance minister, has died. He was 92.

Singh, an economist-turned-politician who also served as the governor of the central bank, was ailing and admitted to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi late on Thursday.

His health deteriorated due to “sudden loss of consciousness at home,” the hospital said in a statement. He was “being treated for age-related medical conditions,” the statement added.

A mild-mannered technocrat, Singh became one of India’s longest-serving prime ministers for 10 years, serving from 2004-2014, earning a reputation as a man of great personal integrity.

“India mourns the loss of one of its most distinguished leaders, Dr. Manmohan Singh Ji,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi said. He applauded the economist-turned-politician’s body of work.

Born into a poor family in a part of British-ruled India now in Pakistan, Singh studied by candlelight to win a place at Cambridge University before heading to Oxford, earning a doctorate with a thesis on the role of exports and free trade in India’s economy.

He became a respected economist, then India’s central bank governor and a government advisor but had no apparent plans for a political career when he was suddenly tapped to become finance minister in 1991.

During that tenure to 1996, Singh was the architect of reforms that saved India’s economy from a severe balance of payments crisis, promoted deregulation and other measures that opened an insular country to the world.

Singh’s ascension to prime minister in 2004 was even more unexpected.

He was asked to take on the job by Sonia Gandhi, who led the centre-left Congress party to a surprise victory. Italian by birth, she feared her ancestry would be used by Hindu-nationalist opponents to attack the government if she were to lead the country.

Riding an unprecedented period of economic growth, Singh’s government shared the spoils of the country’s new found wealth, introducing welfare schemes such as a jobs programme for the rural poor.

In 2008, his government also clinched a landmark deal that permitted peaceful trade in nuclear energy with the United States for the first time in three decades, paving the way for strong relations between New Delhi and Washington.

However, his efforts to further open up the Indian economy were frequently frustrated by political wrangling within his own party and demands made by coalition partners.

Singh adopted a low profile after relinquishing the post of prime minister.




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