Prime Minister Manmohan Singh

Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh, India's fourteenth Prime Minister, is a highly acclaimed economist, administrator, thinker and scholar. A very unassuming and simple personality, Dr. Manmohan Singh has surely recorded his place in History by his economic reforms in 1991 and the Indo US Civil Nuclear Cooperation agreement, which will end more than 24 years of India nuclear apartheid.

Dr. Manmohan Singh was born on September 26, 1932, in a village in the Punjab province of undivided India. Dr. Singh completed his Matriculation examinations from the Punjab University in 1948, Economics degree from University of Cambridge, UK, in 1957 and D. Phil in Economics from Nuffield College at Oxford University in 1962.

Dr. Singh's academic life commenced as faculty of Punjab University and continued with the prestigious Delhi School of Economics. Dr. Manmohan Singh also served with the UNCTAD Secretariat as well, during these years. He was subsequently appointment as Secretary General of the South Commission in Geneva between 1987 and 1990.

Dr. Manmohan Singh's long stint with Indian Government commenced in 1971, when he was appointed as Economic Advisor in the Ministry of Commerce and subsequently as Chief Economic Advisor in the Ministry of Finance in 1972. Dr. Manmohan Singh has also served as Secretary, Ministry of Finance, Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission; Governor of the Reserve Bank of India, Chairman of the University Grants Commission and as Advisor to Prime Minister of India.

When Congress won the 1991 Parliament after the brutal assassination of Shri Rajiv Gandhi, Dr. Manmohan Singh became the Finance Minister and this turned out to be the turning point in the economic history of independent India. Dr. Singh spent five years between 1991 and 1996 as India's Finance Minister and was responsible for ushering in a comprehensive policy of economic reforms.

In his political career, Dr. Singh has been a Member of India's Upper House of Parliament (the Rajya Sabha) since 1991, where he was Leader of the Opposition between 1998 and 2004.

Among the many awards and honours conferred upon Dr. Manmohan Singh won many awards in his long illustrious public career, the most prominent being India's second highest civilian honour, the Padma Vibhushan in 1987. Dr. Manmohan Singh also won the Jawaharlal Nehru Birth Centenary Award of the Indian Science Congress in 1995, the Asia Money Award for Finance Minister of the Year 1993-94, the Euro Money Award for Finance Minister of the Year for 1993. Dr. Singh has also been honoured by a number of other associations including the Japanese Nihon Keizai Shimbun.

Dr. Singh has represented India at many international conferences and in several international organizations. He has led Indian Delegations to the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Cyprus (1993) and to the World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna in 1993.

His book, "India's Export Trends and Prospects for Self-Sustained Growth" [Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1964] was an early critique of India's inward-oriented trade policy.

Dr. Singh and his wife Mrs. Gursharan Kaur have three daughters.