Originally posted in Dhaka Tribune on 6 February 2025
Mahmohan Singh represented the best aspects of what it means to be a world leader
It is with much sadness that I learned of the passing of my good friend Manmohan Singh. We have known each other since 1955, a period of seven decades, when he came up to St John’s college, Cambridge, to do his tripos in economics. I was a year senior to Manmohan though he was a couple of years older than me. He had already earned an Honours and MA degree in Economics from Panjab University and had begun teaching when he was awarded a scholarship to do an Honours degree at Cambridge, on account of his outstanding academic record.
I remember him as a shy, exceptionally modest person, polite in his diction, who rarely thrust himself forward in any conversation. If I were to look back among all my colleagues from South Asia at Cambridge we would have voted him as the least likely to engage in a political career. The idea that he would invest the last 35 years of his life on the frontlines of Indian politics, serving for 10 years as prime minister, was beyond our imagination.
At Cambridge, Manmohan moved on to follow the footsteps of his two distinguished predecessors, Amartya Sen and Jagdish Bhagwati, who both obtained First classes in the Economics Tripos examination and then moved on to win the prestigious Adam Smith prize for writing an essay on an economics topic of their choice.
Manmohan moved on from Cambridge to earn a fellowship at Nuffield College Oxford to do his PhD where he was a contemporary of Kamal Hossain. After a spell at the UN, Manmohan eventually returned to India where he initially taught at the Delhi School of Economics along with Amartya Sen and Jagdish Bhawati. He then moved into public service where he could deploy his talent for policymaking and its execution.
Manmohan successively served as Chief Economic Advisor to the Government of India (GOI), Governor of the Reserve Bank of India, and Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission before entering politics in 1991 to serve as Finance Minister in the Congress government of Narasimha Rao. In his years as a public servant, serving in some of the most influential positions in GOI he demonstrated both a high level of professionalism and integrity in the discharge of his responsibilities. India was indeed fortunate in having a person of such exceptional qualities serving the country at the highest level.
A leader of the South
His sterling qualities were in high demand in global institutions but he only once chose to leave India to serve as the Secretary General of the South Commission (SC). The SC was established in 1988 as part of an initiative to address global economic problems from a Third World perspective. The Commission was chaired by the recently retired President of Tanzania Julius Nyerere, himself an iconic figure. Initially, Nyerere approached Manmohan to serve as the SG of the SC because of his reputation and also because India’s support as a leading Third World country was deemed important for the sustainability of the SC.
Rajiv Gandhi, the then Indian PM, was reluctant to release Manmohan from his highly important position as Deputy Chair of the Indian Planning Commission so Nyerere approached me to take on the challenge of serving as SG of the SC. I was then the Director General of BIDS and in two minds over accepting Nyerere’s invitation. I was about to depart for London to meet Nyerere to discuss the appointment when Rajiv Gandhi relented and agreed to release Manmohan who then took over as the SG of the SC which had set up its Secretariat in Geneva.
As SG, Manmohan presided over a distinguished body of Third World personalities of eminence who served as Members of the Commission but it was left to Manmohan and his team of professionals to write the final report which emerged as a well reasoned, highly informative, and professional document, articulating a world view of the global South. During his tenure as SG, Manmohan reached out to me to join him in Geneva at the SC to contribute to the drafting of the Commission’s report. I spent two months with him in Geneva engaged in this task where I witnessed at first hand, the quiet professionalism he invested in this challenging task and his hands-on commitment in directing the work of the Commission.
A decent human being
In our remaining years I usually met up with him for a meal or a cup of tea at his home, whether he was the PM or a Member of the Rajya Sabha. He generously agreed to be the Chief Guest at the launch of the first volume of my memoir Untranquil Recollections: The Years of Fulfilment at the India International Centre (IIC) in New Delhi. He had just retired as PM so his presence at the IIC entailed high level security but this did not deter him from joining us.
We last met on a visit to Delhi by Rounaq and myself on the eve of Covid and had tea with his wife Gursharan and him at their home. On that occasion he enquired about Prof Yunus, who he knew well and expressed some distress at his highhanded treatment at the hands of former Bangladeshi PM Sheikh Hasina. To the end he remains in my memory as an exceptional human being — decent, modest, principled, a person of great talent and dedication to the service of his country.
Those who have worked more closely with Manmohan during his period as a Professor of Economics at the Delhi School of Economics, his long tenures in government and finally as one of most impactful economic policy-makers in contemporary India, will have written about his public role. I will here add a few remarks on what Manmohan contributed towards the promotion of Indo-Bangladesh relations.
Promoting a balanced Indo-Bangladesh relationship
Shortly after the liberation of Bangladesh, PN Haksar, PM Indira Gandhi’s Principal Secretary, knowing of his close relationship with Nurul Islam and myself, sent Manmohan to Dhaka on an exploratory visit to hold informal talks with the Bangladesh Planning Commission to explore the scope for constructing a more balanced economic relationship between India and Bangladesh.
Since we assumed office, one of the main preoccupations of the Bangladesh Planning Commission had been to expand and diversify Bangladesh’s export capacity to India. We aspired to enhance bilateral trade which had been at a low level during the Pakistan era, whilst reducing the massive trade deficit in favour of India which threatened to emerge out of the prevailing structural asymmetry which prevailed between a more and less developed economy.
One of the ideas discussed with Manmohan was for India to restructure its export trade by progressively moving out of the global market for jute manufactures. At that time India and Bangladesh were the two largest exporters of jute manufactures and in intense competition within a declining global market for jute goods.
Our mission was to persuade India to leave more export space for Bangladesh’s jute manufacturing exports which was then Bangladesh’s principal export. In contrast India then had a much larger and more diversified export basket so that its progressive withdrawal from the global market for jute manufactures would be more easily accommodated by the Indian economy.
Manmohan was quite receptive to this rather unorthodox but imaginative proposal of the Planning Commission for managing trade. He agreed that a high-powered working group be set up involving himself and Arjun Sengupta who was then Economic Minister at the Indian High Commission in Bangladesh, along with Prof Muzzafar Ahmed and AR Khan who were both Division Chiefs in the Bangladesh Planning Commission, to academically evaluate and flesh out the substance of such a policy.
Due to the regime change in Bangladesh in 1975, this initiative did not move forward nor did other initiatives by the Planning Commission to enhance and diversify Bangladesh’s exports to India. Our incapacity to restructure Bangladesh’s trading relations with India has led to an exponential growth over the years in Bangladesh’s trade deficit with India which today is in the region of $12 billion.
It took us another two decades to revisit the issue of enhancing Bangladesh’s export capacity to India. After CPD was established at the end of 1993, we initiated a program of Indo-Bangladesh dialogues in partnership with the Centre for Policy Research (CPR) in New Delhi, one of India’s most prestigious think tanks. Our goal through these dialogues was to seek resolution to some of the long-standing disputes dividing India and Bangladesh so that a more balanced and sustainable relationship could be established between the two neighbours.
One of the key themes raised by CPD was the importance of enhancing Bangladesh’s exports to India. At CPD we believed that the only way that Bangladesh’s fast growing trade deficit with India could be contained was through substantial enhancement of exports from Bangladesh to India through provision of duty free exports.
In the very first dialogue convened in Delhi in 1995, CPD assembled a high powered delegation which included SAMS Kibria, M Syeduzzaman, Morshed Khan then a Minister rank advisor to PM Khaleda Zia, and Amir Khosru Mahmud Chwodhury, then a BNP MP, among others. The Indian team included former PM IK Gujral, Somnath Chatterjee, the leader of the CPM in the Lok Sabha and later its Speaker, and Muchkund Dubey, a former Foreign Secretary and earlier India’s High Commissioner to Bangladesh, among others. The agenda for the dialogue focused on issues of economic cooperation. I had requested Manmohan Singh, who was then Finance Minister in the Congress-led government headed by Narashima Rao, to meet with the Bangladesh team. In response, Manmohan invited the entire Bangladesh delegation to his home to discuss the issue of economic cooperation.
As a trade economist of repute, Manmohan was very receptive to the idea of providing duty free access to Bangladesh’s exports. Muchkund Dubey had prepared an excellent paper on this issue arguing for duty free access for Bangladesh which we presented to Manmohan. In practice, during Manmohan’s tenure as Finance Minister, India initiated a process of reducing duties on Bangladesh’s exports.
This was carried forward by IK Gujral during his tenure as Foreign Minister and later PM of India. Providing duty concessions was only a first step. It was only when Manmohan Singh assumed office as Prime Minister of India in 2004 as head of a Congress-led alliance, that he took the bold step of providing full duty free access to Bangladesh’s exports to India on the grounds that they were an LDC. Similar provisions already applied to Nepal, Bhutan and Maldives.
Duty free provisions for Bangladesh opened up prospects for expanding our exports to India but we could not take full advantage of the provision due to a variety of non-trade barriers (NTBs) which reduced the effectiveness of the duty free provisions. When the issue of NTBs was pursued with Manmohan he conceded its importance in frustrating duty free exports. In 2010 he took the final step for liberalizing trade by drastically reducing the NTB provisions on Bangladesh exports to India. All except a few security- and health-related items were excluded from both duties and NTB.
Such a range of concessions by Manmohan indicated that from his initial interaction with the Bangladesh Planning Commission in 1972 he had remained sensitive to the need to enhance Bangladesh’s export capacity. Over the years, in response to Indo-Bangladesh dialogues with civil society, Manmohan Singh had taken the process of opening up the Indian market to Bangladesh to its logical conclusion.
All such trade concessions made at the Ministerial level do not necessarily translate into fully unrestricted access for Bangladesh’s exports to India. At the official level various impediments of a bureaucratic nature still remain. However, Bangladesh’s exports to India have, as a result of duty free access, risen from around $500 million to over $2bn and could expand much further if Bangladesh’s exporters would demonstrate greater entrepreneurship in searching out export markets and entering into FDI arrangements with prospective partners to maximize the opportunities provided for diversifying and expanding our exports to a duty free Indian market.
Manmohan had hoped to provide a further service to Bangladesh through concluding a treaty with Sheikh Hasina for sharing the Teesta Waters. An agreement had been negotiated and agreed upon between negotiators from the GOI and GOB which was due to be signed on the occasion of Manmohan Singh’s official state visit to Bangladesh in 2010. Unfortunately, Mamata Banerjee, Chief Minister of West Bengal, refused to sign on to the Teesta agreement which remains to this day in limbo and serves as a source of contention between the two countries. How far this problem owes to the state-centre conflict in India and how far it owes to lack of initiative by the governments of Manmohan Singh and Narendra Modi remains unclear. But it has served as a black spot in Indo-Bangladesh relations ever since the frustrated initiative of Manmohan Singh a decade ago.
Whilst I have focused on initiatives by Manmohan Singh initially during his tenure as Finance Minister of India in the 1990s, and later in his two tenures as Prime Minister between 2004-14, it would be simplistic to believe that the final decision on Indo-Bangladesh relations rested in his hands.
As both Finance Minister and PM, Manmohan Singh operated within a more complex decision-making process which included Congress Party leader Sonia Gandhi, other important figures in the cabinet representing varying interests within the ruling alliance as also the political opposition in parliament and across various states. That he could follow through on some initiatives such as trade may have owed to his own political preferences and entrepreneurship, but other players such as Pranab Mukharji, who served as Finance and Foreign Minister and finally as President of India, during Manmohan’s tenure as PM, also played a role.
Today Narendra Modi is much better placed to sign off on all aspects of Indo-Bangladesh relations than his predecessors because he remains the supreme political decision-maker as PM of India compared to the much more constricted decision making space available to Manmohan Singh. In those bygone days, Bangladeshis may have expected more from the tenure of Manmohan Singh as PM. In the contemporary realities governing Indo-Bangladesh relations, we may look back with nostalgia at the opportunities for building a more sustainable relationship provided by a leader of his enlightenment and statesmanship.
Rehman Sobhan is an eminent economist and founder of the Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD).