Manmohan Singh: India's Finest Talent Scout

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Economists live and die by a mantra: resources must flow to their highest-valued use. Manmohan Singh embraced this idea as he steered the Indian economy out of command-and-control and into a market system. But he also applied it in a strikingly personal way—to people. He believed that individuals with talent and expertise should be placed where they can make the greatest difference. Singh was, quite possibly, the finest talent spotter in Indian economics, a skill that would go on to shape the country’s economic policy for decades. His keen talent scouting was his most remarkable quality that has been least remarked upon.Top Panel (L to R): S. Venkitaramanan, C. Rangarajan, Manmohan Singh, M. Narasimham, Bimal Jalan and Y.V. Reddy. Bottom Panel (L to R): N.K. Singh, P. Chidambaram, Montek Singh Ahluwalia, and Shankar Acharya. Singh was excellent at identifying young talent, most famously Montek Singh Ahluwalia. Before Montek and Isher Judge would go on to marry, they met Manmohan Singh in Delhi in 1970. At the time, Singh was a professor at the Delhi School of Economics, known for his work on India’s exports. He seemed too soft-spoken and erudite for the couple to imagine him joining the Ministry of Foreign Trade as an economic advisor just a year later. Over the years, Singh offered suggestions to Isher Judge for her macro-econometric model of the Indian economy, which formed the basis of her doctoral thesis at MIT under Stanley Fischer.During his tenure as chief economic advisor (CEA) to the Government of India, Singh’s relationship with Ahluwalia deepened. Their conversat…