Manmohan Singh: technocrat who became India’s accidental PM

NEW DELHI: Manmohan Singh´s father may have believed his bookworm son would one day lead India, but the understated technocrat with the trademark blue turban, who died on Thursday at the age of 92, never dreamed it would actually happen.

Singh was pitchforked into leading the world´s largest democracy in 2004 by the shock decision of Congress leader Sonia Gandhi to turn down the role after leading the party to an upset win over the ruling Hindu nationalists.

He oversaw an economic boom in Asia´s fourth-largest economy in his first term, although slowing growth in later years marred his second stint. Known as “Mr Clean”, Singh nonetheless saw his image tarnished during his decade-long tenure when a series of corruption cases became public.

As finance minister in the early 1990s, he was hailed at home and abroad for initiating big-bang reforms that opened India´s inward-looking economy to the world.

Known as a loyalist to the Gandhi political dynasty, Singh studied economics to find a way to eradicate poverty in the vast nation and never held elected office before becoming PM.

But he deftly managed the rough and tumble of Indian politics -- even though many said Sonia Gandhi, the Italian-born widow of the assassinated Rajiv Gandhi, was the power behind the throne.

Born in 1932 in the mud-house village of Gah in what is now Pakistan, Singh moved to the holy Sikh city of Amritsar as a teenager around the time the subcontinent was split at the end of British rule.His father was a dry-fruit seller in Amritsar, and he had nine brothers and sisters.

He was so determined to get an education he would study at night under streetlights because it was too noisy at home, his brother Surjit Singh told AFP in 2004.