‘Mild-mannered economist’: Here’s what Barack Obama said about Manmohan Singh in his memoir ‘A Promised Land’
Obama in his book offered a definitive assessment of the former prime minister, calling him “a mild-mannered economist” with an “impassive integrity”.
Former Indian PM Manmohan Singh; ex-US President Barack Obama.
Key Highlights
- Manmohan Singh and Barack Obama served at the top positions in their respective countries around the same time
- Singh, an economist by profession, held the posts of Union finance minister and Governor of Reserve Bank of India during his illustrious career that lasted nearly five decades
Washington DC: Former US president Barack Obama has in his memoir ‘A Promised Land’ made special references to Indian politicians given his eight-year stint at the helm in the States from 2009-2017.
In his book, while he likened the face of Indian opposition and Congress MP Rahul Gandhi as “a hapless student with “a nervous, unformed quality”, the former US President also had a thing or two to say about former Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh.
Singh, an economist by profession, held the posts of Union finance minister and Governor of Reserve Bank of India during his illustrious career that lasted nearly five decades.
Obama in his book offered a more definitive assessment of Singh, a Rajya Sabha MP for over two decades, and called him “a mild-mannered economist” whom the former has praised publicly on several occasions.
However, the book also found Obama saying that former US Secretary of Defence Bob Gates and Singh both came across as people who had some kind of an “impassive integrity”.
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Manmohan Singh and Barack Obama served at the top positions in their respective countries around the same time. Singh was the prime minister of India from 2004-2014.
Obama, someone who has always measured his words, commented about Rahul Gandhi and said, “He has a nervous, unformed quality about him, as if he were a student who’d done the coursework and was eager to impress the teacher but deep down lacked either the aptitude or the passion to master the subject.”
Publisher Penguin Random House considers ‘A Promised Land’ as Obama’s “improbable odyssey from young man searching for his identity to leader of the free world, describing in strikingly personal detail both his political education and the landmark moments of the first term of his historic presidency—a time of dramatic transformation and turmoil”.