"Sikh Who Saved India's Economy Is Named Premier"
Amy Waldman, NY Times, May 20, 2004
NEW DELHI, May 19 — Manmohan Singh, the gentlemanly Oxford-educated economist who saved India from economic collapse in 1991 and began the liberalization of its economy, has been appointed the country's next prime minister, ending a week of high political drama.
Mr. Singh said Wednesday night that the country's president had asked him to form the next government. At his side stood Sonia Gandhi, who a day earlier had stunned the country by announcing she would not become prime minister as expected.
Mrs. Gandhi, the Italian-born widow of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, reiterated that decision on Wednesday, despite pleas and protests from party members. Parliament members from her Indian National Congress then selected Mr. Singh, who was finance minister from 1991 to 1996. He will be sworn in within a few days.
In many ways, Mr. Singh, the architect of the restructuring of the Indian economy after four decades of quasi-socialism, is an apt choice to lead India now, when it is fast rising as a global economic power.
It faces the challenge of reforming further in order to ensure higher growth rates, but also delivering the benefits of reform beyond the growing middle class. That is the message being taken from the election results, when the largely pro-reform government led by the Bharatiya Janata Party was rejected by voters.
"We will give to the world and to our people a model of economic reforms," Mr. Singh said Wednesday night, but with a "human element." The new government, he said, would "create new opportunities for the poor and the downtrodden to participate in development."
Full: here.
New, harsher photos of American savagery from Abu Ghraib prison have been made public this morning.