NEW DELHI: Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh who was criticised for being a “silent” prime minister said on Tuesday he never shied away from speaking to the press.
PM Modi used to mockingly call his predecessor Dr Manmohan Singh “Maun Mohan Singh.”
“People say I was a silent Prime Minister. I think these volumes (his book ‘Changing India’) speak for themselves. I wasn’t the PM who was afraid of talking to the press. I met press regularly and on every foreign trip that I undertook. I had a press conference on return in the plane,” said Manmohan Singh at the launch his five-volume book ‘Changing India’.
Manhohan further said, “I think these volumes speak for themselves and I don’t want to boast about achievements as prime minister but the events that took place are well described in these volumes, particularly in the volume that deal with ‘Prime Minister Speaks’.”
The former Prime Minister said that he was not only an ‘accidental prime minister’ of India but also the country’s accidental ‘finance minister.’
“I have been termed as an accident prime minister of the country, but I think that I was also an accidental finance minister,” he said after the launch of his book.
Singh further noted that when he was India’s Finance Minister in 1991, he was successful in helping turn a crisis into a “great opportunity.”
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“Life has been a great adventure and an enterprise, which I relish. I have no regrets. I will never be able to return what my country gave me. Some part of life has been smooth sailing and there were some hiccups,” he noted.
Singh, who has been very critical of the BJP-led Central government for destroying the economy through the implementation of Goods and Services Tax (GST) and demonetisation, said that despite all the hiccups and hurdles, India will rise to be a superpower.
“This country is destined to be a major power. The thrust of India’s economic policy has not changed for the last 25 years,” he added.
With agency inputs