New Delhi: India on Friday declared seven days of national mourning following the death of former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, one of the architects of the country’s economic liberalization in the early 1990s.
Singh, who held office from 2004 to 2014, died at the age of 92 late on Thursday in a Delhi hospital. He will also be given a state funeral.
“As a mark of respect to the deceased dignitary, it has been decided that seven days of national mourning will be observed across India,” the Indian government said in a statement on Friday, with mourning to continue until January 1.
“It has also been decided that a state funeral will be accorded to the late Dr. Manmohan Singh,” the statement read, with the national flag flying at half-mast on official buildings across the country.
The Indian cricket team battling Australia in the fourth Test took to the ground in Melbourne on Friday wearing black armbands to show respect to Singh.
An official date for the state funeral was not immediately announced, but a senior member of Congress suggested it would take place on Saturday.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi said India was “mourning the loss of one of its most distinguished leaders” as newspapers celebrated his legacy.
“The man who set India’s dreams free,” read the front page of The Times of India.
“He opened India to the world,” read the headline of The Indian Express.
An underrated technocrat
The former prime minister was an understated technocrat who was hailed for overseeing an economic boom in Asia’s fourth-largest economy in his first term.
However, Singh’s second term ended with a series of major corruption scandals, slowing growth and high inflation.
Singh’s second-term unpopularity and the lackluster leadership of Nehru-Gandhi scion Rahul Gandhi, the current opposition leader in the lower house, led to Modi’s first landslide victory in 2014.
Singh was born in 1932 in the clay village of Gah in what is now Pakistan. He studied economics to find a way to eradicate poverty in the vast country and had never held elected office before assuming the country’s highest office.
He won scholarships to attend both Cambridge, where he gained a first in economics, and Oxford, where he completed his Ph.D.
Singh has worked in a number of senior civil services, serving as a central bank governor and also holding various positions in global agencies such as the United Nations.
In 1991, he was tapped by the then Congress Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao will bring India back from the worst financial crisis in its modern history.
In his first term, Singh steered the economy through a period of nine percent growth and gave India the international influence it had long sought.
He also sealed a landmark nuclear deal with the United States that he says will help India meet its growing energy needs.
