Manmohan Singh's Wisdom: Top Quotes From The Architect Of India's Economic Reforms

Former Prime Minister and the architect of the country's economic reforms in 1991, Dr Manmohan Singh, passed away Thursday night due to age-related medical issues. Singh served as the country's Prime Minister for two terms in the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government from 2004 to 2014.

The former Prime Minister was a revered economist. He served as the chief economic adviser in 1972 and finance secretary in 1976. He was appointed governor of the Reserve Bank of India in 1982.

Not just this, Singh served as the finance minister under the Narsimha Rao-led government in the early 1990s and was credited for effectively addressing the 1991 economic crisis, which led India to embrace liberalisation, privatisation and globalisation.

During his tenure as the prime minister of the country, he implemented several welfare schemes including the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act.

1. "No power on earth can stop an idea whose time has come. The emergence of India as a major economic power is one such idea.," he had said in his 1991 Budget speech. "India is now wide awake. We shall prevail."

2. While addressing the Parliament in 1991 he also said, "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."

3. "I do not believe that I have been a weak Prime Minister. I honestly believe that history will be kinder to me than the contemporary media or for that matter the Opposition in Parliament… Given the political compulsions, I have done my best."

4. "GST is an idea, which had the blessings of the Congress party, but we would have implemented it after due care and adequate preparation."

5. "India happens to be a rich country inhabited by very poor people."

6. "Cutting the fiscal deficit is not popular. That is the experience of all governments in all countries. Expenditure cuts hurt certain vested interests, and they don't like it."

7. "Let me say that I think the economic history of the last 150 years clearly shows that if you want to industrialise a country in a short period, let us say 20 years, and you don't have a well-developed private sector, entrepreneurial class, then central planning is important."

8. "If you have a rigidly controlled economy, cut off from the rest of the world by infinite protection, nobody has any incentive to increase productivity and to bring new ideas."

9. "We are a mixed economy. We will remain a mixed economy. The public and private sector will continue to play a very important role. The private sector in our country has very ample scope and I am confident that India's entrepreneurs have the capacity, and the will to rise to the occasion."

10. "We (in 1991) got government off the backs of the people of India, particularly off the backs of India's entrepreneurs. We introduced more competition, both internal competition and external competition. We simplified and rationalized the tax system. We made risk-taking much more attractive."