New Delhi: When Narasimha Rao became Prime Minister in 1991, then-Cabinet secretary Naresh Chandra told him he should bring a technocrat to head the finance ministry to pull the economy out of the deep mess it was in. Manmohan Singh was picked for the task.

Manmohan Singh agreed, but with a caveat: he would take several politically unpopular decisions. “Leave the politics to me. If you succeed, we will share the credit. If you fail, you take the blame,” Narasimha Rao then told Singh, sealing the matter.

Planning Commission ex-deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia shared this anecdote Thursday in a lecture he delivered on ‘The Life and Legacy of Dr Manmohan Singh’. The lecture was part of the Prime Minister’s Lecture Series, organised by the Prime Minister’s Museum and Library (PMML). S

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