A Man in Shadow

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"My father always said that one day [Singh] would be a very successful man," says Kaur. And so he is. By the time he was 30, Singh had economics degrees from Panjab University (sometimes called Punjab University) and Cambridge, plus a doctorate from Oxford. He went on to occupy India's key economic posts, becoming governor of the Reserve Bank of India and deputy chairman of the planning commission. It's a trajectory that suggests a determination the soft-spoken man is rarely associated with. "Twelve years of your life you're in a village, and a decade later, you're at Oxford," says Sanjaya Baru, one of Singh's former media advisers. "You then get job after job after job that every economist dreams of. A lot of people say, 'He's colorless. He's weak. He can't take decisions.' It's all a put-on."

The debate over whether Singh owes his success to ambition or luck goes back to the earliest days of his political career. In 1991, India was in the throes of a deep financial crisis after a rapid increase in government spending in the 1980s led to vast internal and external debt. With a downgraded credit rating that limited new borrowing, as well as a draining of deposits by nonresident Indians, the country had only a few weeks of foreign-exchange reserves left in its coffers. Delhi had to airlift the nation's bullion to Europe to secure an IMF loan. Recognizing that drastic action was needed, then Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao offered Singh the job of Finance Minister. Some still question which man was the real force behind the reforms that brought the nation back from the brink, eviscerating India's restrictive licensing bureau, reducing tariffs, freeing up interest rates and expediting direct foreign investment, inter alia. But it was Singh, not Rao, who stood before Parliament on July 24, 1991, to present the game-changing 1991 — 92 budget. "As Victor Hugo once said, 'No power on earth can stop an idea whose time has come,'" he declared in the final, rousing words of a speech that has become part of the lore of India's rise. "I suggest to this august house that the emergence of India as a major economic power in the world happens to be one such idea. Let the whole world hear it loud and clear: India is now wide awake. We shall prevail. We shall overcome."

After leaving the Finance Ministry in 1996, Singh retained his seat in the parliamentary upper house and basked in credit for the Indian boom. In 2004, the Congress Party took back the government in a surprise win over the coalition led by the center-right Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Congress Party leader Gandhi was the natural choice for the job, but the fact that she was Italian-born had become a subject of controversy, particularly among Hindu nationalist groups. This very likely helped her decide to hand the reins to the less polarizing Singh. It was a savvy decision that also assuaged suspicions of the Gandhis' dynastic tendencies among members of the new, Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA). "They needed somebody who would be acceptable both to Congress and to the allies," says Baru. "Manmohan Singh was that kind of a person."

The move paid off. After general elections in 2004 left no party with a clear parliamentary majority, the UPA formed a center-left government by garnering support from major regional parties and some socialist ones, including the Communist Party. Together with Gandhi, Singh, who as a Sikh was the nation's first non-Hindu Prime Minister, led the new government into a period of growth and progressive social legislation. Outwardly, he appeared decisive. He threatened to quit in 2008, for instance, when his political allies balked at a U.S. deal that opened up India's civil nuclear facilities to international inspections and proved to be a watershed moment in U.S.-India relations. "He was taking India in a different direction," says Dasgupta. "He was breaking from the past." Voters responded: in May 2009, the UPA was voted into power for a second term, handing the coalition another five years at the helm.

For Singh, it was a priceless mandate — one his critics say he has squandered. In the past three years, the calm confidence he once radiated has been absent. He seems unable to control his ministers and — his new, temporary portfolio at the Finance Ministry notwithstanding — unwilling to stick his neck out on reforms that will continue the process of liberalization he helped start. "Since 2004, we haven't quite had a Prime Minister," says Bibek Debroy, an economist at New Delhi's Centre for Policy Research and a former adviser to Singh. Some believe his unofficial power-sharing agreement with Gandhi has tied his hands and that he lacks the clout to go against other party stalwarts. Jokes about his diffidence are circulating — like the one where Singh sits down in the dentist chair, and the dentist says, "At least here you can open your mouth!" His supporters blame the system. "Being a very sensitive person with an acute intellect, he realizes the limitations of what he has been able to achieve," N.K. Singh, an upper-house MP who has worked with Singh since the late 1960s, said in May.

True, there is much that is outside Singh's control. India's democracy is defined by its raucous plurality, and the current coalition, representing interests from many corners of the vast country, has grown particularly unwieldy. Parliament too has become less productive. In the last session, only 14% of the lower house's time was used to discuss legislation, according to PRS Legislative Research, a nonpartisan think tank in New Delhi. In fact, the number of hours that the legislature has met since the 2009 elections shows that this Parliament is shaping up to be "the worst ever," says PRS's M.R. Madhavan.