Dr. Manmohan Singh — the very epitome of simplicity, honesty, and integrity — the man we knew as father’s colleague

By Geetha Gangadaran, nee Ramachandran, Ganapathi Ramachandran, and Arun Ramachandran

( Children of Former Finance Secretary, Late G Ramachandran) — Ganapthi is an IT Entrepreneur and Mentor to Start-ups, Arun is an inventor in IT warehousing space and Geetha was a student of Dr. MMS at DSE, a columnist, and an author.

Dr. Manmohan Singh’s name was first mentioned at the dining table when our father Late G Ramachandran served as Additional Secretary to the Prime Minister, Mrs. Indira Gandhi.

Thereafter, not a day passed when his name was not discussed in some context or the other at our house.

Both father and Dr Manmohan Singh became Secretaries in the Finance Ministry a few days after each other, with the father’s appointment coming through slightly earlier.

Father as Secretary, Expenditure and later as Finance Secretary and Dr. Manmohan Singh as Secretary, Economics Affairs had  prepared several budgets from 1976 through 1982.

There was an entirely different side to Dr. Manmohan Singh and my father’s relationship.  We can’t go into the official side because we don’t know about it, but suffice it to say, not a day went by during those six years when they did not meet one another.

The friendship and relationship continued long after that with Dr. Manmohan Singh as Finance Minister and later as Prime Minister. And when our father met him as the Finance Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh invited him to join the board of the Reserve Bank as the government’s nominee.

Later as Prime Minister, he shared his personal number,  which he said he or his wife would pick up.

I don’t know how many times they called each other’s landline phones, but I’m sure they would have had a few conversations. When our father called on Dr Manmohan Singh after he became the Prime Minister, the warmth was still the same if not more, since when they first met in the early 70s when Dr. Manmohan Singh joined the government as the Chief Economic Advisor.

If the husbands were friends, it wasn’t unusual for the wives to be good friends also.

Dr. Manmohan Singh’s wife, Mrs. Gursharan Kaur would call my mother paapa and one of the most interesting of conversations was when the former PM went for a posting in New York. She came to our house and borrowed a box that was on the verge of condemnation, as she was running short of luggage space to carry her luggage to the USA.

Such was the integrity that a nearly unusable box, which possibly my grandfather used, was returned on one of the trips she made to India.

I (Ganapathi) had the opportunity to meet Dr Manmohan Singh a couple of times, and the final meeting was when I called on him to present our father’s memoirs. By then, he had become the former Prime Minister, and he could afford to spend a lot of time with me.

The meeting was very emotive as both of us recalled several instances of father’s and his togetherness and both of us undoubtedly had a little bit of tears in our eyes.

When my brother-in-law was serving as the Governor of Rotary, at our father’s request, Dr. Manmohan Singh accepted the Rotary’s highest award. This was soon after he laid down the office of the Finance Minister.

I had coordinated the visit through his Former Special Assistant, Sameer Vyas of the Tamil Nadu cadre. When Sameer told Dr. Manmohan Singh that they are good people, I wasn’t sure whether he meant the family or Rotary.

Such was Dr Manmohan Singh’s demeanor when I went to see him off after the awards function at the airport, the former PM, insisted on standing in the queue to go through the security, although protocol officials at the airport saw him and volunteered to steer him past the line.

It was another thing that while I was finalizing his tour program, he told me that he was no longer a Minister and therefore wouldn’t be able to afford the air tickets.

Rotary could afford and we had the joy of having him in Chennai and the normally stoic Madras club waived the dress regulation and allowed him to come in his famous pajama and kurta and his blue turban.

Such was the power of the intellect.

We do not wish to sensationalize this tribute to him, by recalling a few delicate moments from the togetherness our father and Dr. Manmohan Singh had in the  Finance Ministry. But we wish to share an episode from our father’s memoirs, Walking With Giants, as it exemplifies their proximity.

Neither of them could afford a driver, nor knew driving, and hence both would walk back to their respective houses together, and part ways at a junction every evening, as their official cars would pass them carrying their files.

I would always wonder why the two, at their age, could not be allowed to board a government car.

Such was the integrity at that time and when Dr. Manmohan Singh would walk at a speed, that my father always struggled to keep up with, the Former PM recollected how he picked up this habit of walking fast. He said when he was studying at Cambridge, he couldn’t afford costly shoes to protect his feet in the deadly snow. He said he overcame this problem by walking very fast to reach his destination.

Such was the simplicity.

Such was the humility.

Such was the man.

Dr Manmohan Singh said history will be kinder when he lays down his office. History can’t but be kind.

As Finance Secretary, father and Dr. Manmohan Singh as Secretary, Economic Affairs would be invited for several banquets and dinners, and they would mostly go together and come back together. On one of those occasions, he told my father, that he tried to accept these dinners because he said he couldn’t afford nonveg on his dining table, and this was one way he and his wife could dip into some non-veg.

Such was the honesty and integrity that existed in those days.

An accidental Prime Minister may be the title of his Biography by a journalist, but he was not an accidental academician. He was tailormade to be an educationist with potential par excellence. He believed in the doctrine of education being the real catalyst for the true development of India.

When I (Geetha) was a student and went into the portals of the Delhi School of Economics, no one there talked of Delhi in the DSE or the S in the school of DSE, but they only talked about the faculty.

They took pride in only associating themselves with the Economics teacher in the faculty, Dr. Manmohan Singh.

Every student of the ’60s prided themselves on telling their peers that they were there in the Delhi School of Economics when Dr. Manmohan Singh was a faculty member. And that was the kind of adulation we as students had for him.

I recollect our father telling us that during his long walks with Dr. Manmohan Singh at late evenings around South Block, they would discuss economic reforms and their implementation. Their walks served two purposes —  the exercise would do them good physically and also made people believe that they were simple people who saved on fuel and money too.

Both my father and Dr Manmohan Singh had humble beginnings. When my father congratulated him on becoming the Prime Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh, our father did not find him excited or enamored. He probably took it up yet another day job that he was dutybound to execute.

Both also shared simple food habits. I remember both had simple breakfast, even after Dr Manmohan Singh became the Prime Minister. No frills for him. That was his mantra.

When my father became ill, he could not come personally but would inquire about him through Dr. Montek Singh Ahluwalia. Dr Manmohan Singh wrote a moving note to our mother when our father passed away, in which he recalled the days they two worked together.

Dr. Manmohan Singh also autographed our father’s autobiography, Walking With Giants, sometime after our father passed away.