“But did she not just do what she promised her supporters?” asked Dr Manmohan Singh to me on September 25, 2022, his 90th birthday.When streams of visitors were pouring in to wish him, he was more interested in discussing the then UK Prime Minister Liz Truss’ controversial budget that she had just presented which eventually led to the collapse of her government.This one incident conveys a lot about Dr.Singh, as I fondly called him. Nothing excited him more than nation building. He devoted his entire life to his country’s development and prosperity.Even after stepping into his 90s, he still had a child-like curiosity about political, geo-political, social and economic developments in India and the world.He was always looking to imbibe ideas from all around on what and what not to do for India’s development. He understood profoundly that navigating the treacherous terrain of politics was critical and inevitable to make a meaningful contribution to the nation.But just as he sharply observed in Truss’ budget incident, he had an old-fashioned belief about leaders’ keeping their promises to people. Virtues of sincerity, integrity, loyalty and diligence mattered as much to him as free trade and poverty alleviation. He never believed that they were contradictory.He was careful to be not dogmatic and was willing to change his views as facts changed. Be it in the importance of pursuing headline GDP growth as a sole economic objective to unabashed free trade to even his opinions on people. He listened, collected information and was open to alter his views. Most importantly, Dr Singh was a true multi-disciplinarian and, contrary to popular belief, decried a siloed technocratic approach to solving complex problems of networked societies.
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