A gentle giant

Manmohan Singh opened doors; because he had an openness of thought, driven by his commitment to change

- SUNITA NARAIN

Our association was uncommon, even unusual. Dr Manmohan Singh, India's economist prime minister who passed away recently, was cut from the conventional cloth of market economics. Anil Agarwal was a dyed-in-the-wool environmentalist. In 1991, when Manmohan Singh brought India into the liberalised world of deregulation and opened borders for trade, we were not part of the cheering brigade. For us, the issue was what liberalisation would mean for the environment – our regulatory institutions were fragile and so, would this opening of the economy lead to pollution and degradation? But interestingly, we were not dismissed by Singh, and this is what made him different from his ilk. He engaged with us. This is not to say that he accepted what we said. But he understood that this was a world that he had not considered. He wanted to know more; wanted to understand what could be done to strengthen the systems so that a balance could be found. 'Balance' was the operative word.