Economist Manmohan was a man of simplicity honesty and scholarship ,but in the second innings he was like a pussy cat sitting on driver's seat presiding over scams and scandalsbecause he had emerged as politician

The economic reforms initiated by the congress government in the early nineties in a sense were more of an accident and they were undertaken under compulsion rather than by choice; it made a radical departure from its own brand of bureaucratic socialism or Nehruvian Post- Office socialism. The creative destruction that remains at the heart of market economy was unleashed by Dr. Singh in the form of  a) opening up the economy to foreign competition, b) privatizing the profit making PSUs, c) freeing exchange rates and interest rates relatively from the bureaucratic shackles and administrative fiats, d) lowering the general height of the tariff wall, e) slashing down customs and excise duties and in sum easing or eliminating all forms of controls and regulations that had all along crippled the expansion and diversification of the private sector.

“Seldom before had single man made so much difference in the lives of the people as Dr. Manmohan Singh whose economic policy has left a mark on the system.  His simplicity, scholarship and commitment to the service of the people are in the best traditions of the service above self” so read the citation by jury members while presenting honest man award to Dr. Manmohan in 1996. 

By taking the economic road less travelled by his predecessors Dr. Singh could make a significant impact on balance of payments, exchange rate and inflation in a short span of time. Despite this remarkable macro economic transformation, the congress party got the worst beating in the electoral battle that followed their reformist rule.  Dr. Manmohan’s poetic statement during his hey-day in parliament that voting for congress was good economics as well, somehow did not sound music to the ears of the majority of the electorate weighed down by poverty and steep erosion in the purchasing power of rupee. They had an innate common sense and judgement to perceive that the structural economic reforms had not reflected and respected their aspirations.  Surprisingly enough besides economics, perhaps the bad immoral politics, the growing tendency of amorality among politicians must have alienated the masses from the Congress Party.  The confused verdict delivered then was thus a natural derivative of a heightened irritation with the rulers.