Dr Manmohan Singh came and won a million hearts. Extraordinarily simple, humble to a fault, of unquestionable integrity and unflinching honesty - his image had reached Mauritius, days before he set foot on the island.

Prior to his election as India?s fourteenth Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan held many high positions ? chief economic advisor to the Ministry of Finance, Governor of the Reserve Bank of India, Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission and a Finance Minister in the Congress government of Narasimha Rao. Before that, he had been a Professor of Economics at the prestigious Delhi School of Economics and a topper in every class from school days to college in Oxford and Cambridge. He is a rare combination of an academic, a career bureaucrat, a professional and a politician.

Nobel laureate and economist Amartya Sen, once prophesized ?He (Dr Manmohan Singh) may one day very well become the prime minister of India. He has many years to go. He may well be the Prime Minister in his full bloom?, Ironically, almost immediately afterwards, in 1999, Dr Manmohan Singh lost elections in his South Delhi constituency. Amartya Sen?s words however came true five years later with the fall of the right wing BJP coalition and the installation of Dr Manmohan Singh as the Prime Minister of a left-supported Congress government in 2004.

Stories about Dr Singh?s simplicity and honesty abound. Recounting his personal experience with Manmohan Singh, the noted Indian columnist and writer Khushwant Singh wrote in his weekly column in the Times of India how a supporter of Manmohan Singh came to see him and told him that they had no money to hire buses or two-wheelers to take voters to the polling booths, a common practice in Indian elections. Khushwant gave him some money. A few days after the results were announced and Manmohan had lost, he (Manmohan Singh) personally rang him up and dropped in. He handed back the bagful of currency notes to Khushwant saying, ?I didn?t know you had given this, please take it back.? How many politicians today would do that? ? the astonished journalist proclaimed. ?I have yet to meet another man who combined such a brilliant mind with self-effacing modesty?, added Khushwant Singh. ?I never heard him talk of himself or his achievements?, in direct contrast with most self-aggrandizing politicians who always talk and rarely listen.

Ambitious economic reforms

Dr Singh answers his own telephone and drives home daily for a simple vegetarian lunch with his wife. Having promised Sonia Gandhi his silence when she first offered him the premiership, he let his wife learn about his new post from the television. He is the first prime minister to have dispensed with the howling, gun-toting police jeeps that usually announce a prime minister?s progress through the streets of the capital.

Professor Jagdish Bhagwati of Columbia University, a fellow economist, who has been a friend of Singh?s since their days as undergraduates at the University of Cambridge, has his own favorite story. When Singh?s daughter Amrit Kaur applied to Columbia University for a doctoral fellowship, said Bhagwati, he ?never even mentioned it to me.? In other words, Singh refused to pull any strings. ?He must be the only father in India who wouldn?t make that call?, said Bhagwati. ?He?s just a really good man.?

Dr Manmohan Singh?s simplicity, honesty and integrity can only be matched by his competence. He is credited with the most ambitious economic reforms in post-independent India as a Finance Minister in the Narasimha Rao government between 1991 and 1996. His wide ranging policies of economic liberalization laid the foundation of a resurgent India- that the hard-nosed New York based Goldman Sachs predicts will overtake the United States, in economic size- before the middle of twenty-first century.

?No power on earth can stop an idea whose time has come.? Dr Singh is remembered to have famously quoted Victor Hugo in his maiden speech after taking over as Finance Minister. He exhorted, to the Parliament, that the emergence of India as a major global power, (an) economic power, is an idea whose time had come.

Amidst the crisis of ninety one, when the Indian economy was on the verge of collapse with barely two weeks of forex reserves, it required not only gut-wrenching courage to undertake unpopular reforms in a democratic nation with strong opposition, but profound conviction and commitment to hard work from within and outside the government, the industry and the population in general.

Rooted in his conviction about reforms, was his sincere belief that if India did the things that he was saying to Parliament that they should do, no power on earth could stop the realization of that idea. So the dream was that if India could undertake basic structural changes, out of that would emerge a new India, an India where there would be no poverty, ignorance, or disease.

Each day of the seventy- six years of Dr Manmohan Singh?s life has valuable lessons not only for the personal conduct of bureaucrats and politicians, but his brand of economic policy, popularly termed Manmohanomics contains important lessons for nations facing economic anguish.

?Mauritius? fondly described as a ?great little island? by the late Mrs Indira Gandhi, a previous Congress Prime Minister, is today faced with the formidable challenges of globalization and a changing world order that demands fundamental economic reforms and major policy realignment.

Mauritius needs a Manmohan Singh?

A Manmohan, simple, truthful, honest, transparent and competent who would not only carry out the next generation of economic and social reengineering but be respectful and trusted enough to shepherd the population towards a potentially painful yet truly prosperous future.

He is amidst us, we must find him?

<B>Baljinder SHARMA</B>