Dr. Manmohan Singh

Dr. Manmohan Singh, an economist by profession, worked for the International Monetary Fund in his younger days. Dr. Singh calls himself, a "politician by accident". Dr. Singh is known to be an unassuming politician, enjoying a formidable, highly respected and admired image. Due to his work at the UN, International Monetary Fund and other international bodies, he is highly respected around the world. He was the governor of the Reserve Bank of India, from 1982 to 1985. He served as the Finance Minister under Narasimha Rao from 1991 to 1996, before becoming Prime Minister. He is credited with transforming the economy in the early 1990s during the financial crisis, dismantling License Raj, and allowing easier and more Foreign Direct Investment and beginning the process of the privatization of public sector companies.

Dr. Manmohan Singh served as Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha (upper house) from March 1998 to May 2004, when the Bharatiya Janata Party-led coalition government was in office. His economic policies - which included getting rid of several socialist policies, especially the License Raj - were popular. He enjoys strong support among the middle classes of India due to his education. Singh lost the election in the Lok Sabha from South Delhi constituency in the 1999 general elections. He is thus the only Indian Prime Minister never to have been an elected member of the Lower House of Parliament. In fact he has not won a direct election. He has been a member of the Rajya Sabha from Assam since 1995. He was re-elected to the Rajya Sabha in 2001 and 2007.

Dr. Manmohan Singh is widely regarded as the architect of India's original economic reform programme, which was enacted in 1991 under Rao's administration. The economic liberalization package pushed by Singh and Rao opened the nation to foreign direct investment. The liberalization was prompted by an acute balance-of-payments crisis whereby the Indian government, left without sufficient reserves to meet its obligations, had begun preparations to mortgage its gold reserves to the Bank of England in order to obtain the cash reserves needed to run the country.