Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh showed immense courage of conviction when he held out that India and Pakistan ought to seek measures to tackle poverty and disease. It must be held that Singh said this, loud and clear, even in the midst of heightening tension between the two nations, because he belongs to a small section in our political class who did not begin their lives as active politicians.

Lest it is misunderstood, let me clarify that I am not advocating leaving the nation to technocrats and banish the political class. Such a suggestion is and will remain inimical to constitutional democracy. It must be reiterated that politicians are and ought to be an integral part of democracy. Singh, perhaps, stands out for having stayed on in the rough and tumble of the political world for almost three decades since he joined the P V Narasimha Rao cabinet in June 1991.

During this time, pretty long one must say and tumultuous too, Singh showed signs of thinking and speaking from his head rather than let emotions play the guide. Take for instance his response, when called for, to the genocide of Sikhs in Delhi and elsewhere in October-November 1984. Neither did he seek to stay clear by holding that he was not a political player then nor did he let his own identity as a Sikh play up. And this holds true about his political views being shaded by the fact that he too was forced out of his home in what is now Pakistan.

The event as such did not attract much attention. The media was busy doing whatever Singh was speaking against: War Mongering from the comforts of their studio. Well. The occasion too was not all that newsworthy; an award from an NGO for National Leadership and Lifetime Achievement to the former prime minister.

Manmohan Singh did intervene, as finance minister between 1991 and 1996, to effect a course correction in so far as India’s economic policy was concerned, with his policy aimed at freeing the economy from the license-permit raj, whatever it meant. Though he was one of those who served the system, until then, implementing the planned economy, Singh said nothing to dispel the notion many created that all that happened with the Nehru-Mahalanobis model did nothing to develop the economy.

While Singh would clarify, in private conversations, that the model as such was not fallacious, some of its intentions did not materialize due to corruption at the level of implementation, his comrade in the post-1991 period, Montek Singh Ahluwalia, on whom he had placed a lot, did do enough in the Planning Commission to distort the idea and use statistical jugglery to reduce the proportion of people below the poverty line. Singh, even while knowing these, decided to stay like Dhrirashtra did in the Mahabharata.

The giant push that Singh’s neo-liberal reforms received was, however, accompanied by corruption and cronyism during the five years. And it hardly changed in the eight years between 1996 and 2004. It may be one thing that the scandals that broke out then and later on did not lead to prosecution and redemption of the resources lost and this certainly due to fallacies in the anti-corruption laws, the fact is the neo-liberal model too failed in so far as development and eradication of poverty and disease was concerned.

Singh got another chance and this time as prime minister to effect a course correction. The Washington consensus that he pursued, once again, seemed to have internalized the necessary course correction – even from its own framework – with the enactment of the NREGA, a herculean welfare measure that was built on the foundation of livelihood as a right. This, indeed, opened the doors for a large experiment with potential for a socio-economic transformation. Singh, more than anyone else, was best placed to understand its implication and he seemed, too.

His long innings as prime minister for two complete terms also cut through a phase of the global melt-down. And the economy was, to a large extent, unaffected by the global crisis. That the economist prime minister had played a stellar role in ensuring this is beyond doubt. But then, the scandals that surfaced involving half the government departments and the ministers at their helm is something that Singh seemed to ignore.

The point is there was a certain deficit in Singh’s measures, since July 1991, to battle against poverty and disease. The deficit could be either systemic (in other words the Washington consensus and the neo-liberal scheme) or at the stage of implementation (corruption causing inadequate percolation down the line of resources).

It is imperative that Singh takes up the task of explaining where things went wrong and how the wrong can be set right. The scholar-politician can afford to think aloud and talk aloud too. As much as he showed the courage to speak up against the trend and call for saner counsel to address the enemy within – poverty and disease, Singh will do us and our future as a nation a patriotic deed by engaging with the problem and let us know where things ought to be corrected.

V Krishna Ananth teaches History at Sikkim University, Gangtok.