On what would have been one of India's most consequential leaders' birthdays, Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah on Saturday, September 26, 2026 paid a heartfelt tribute to former Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh, honouring the economist-statesman who rewrote India's economic destiny and enshrined welfare as a citizen's right.

Writing in Kannada, CM Siddaramaiah recalled Dr Singh as 'mahaan aarthika tajnya' — a great economic expert — who steered India out of crisis and built a sturdy foundation for its economy. 'On his birth anniversary, I respectfully remember the visionary leader who, through far-sighted reforms during a period of economic hardship, laid a strong foundation for the nation's economy, and who as Prime Minister gave equal priority to social justice alongside economic growth,' the Chief Minister wrote.

The architect of 1991 and what followed

Dr Manmohan Singh's biography is inseparable from modern India's economic turning points. As Finance Minister in 1991, he dismantled the licence raj, opened the economy to foreign investment, and pulled India back from the edge of a balance-of-payments collapse. That single reformist moment set the trajectory for decades of growth. When he returned as Prime Minister from 2004 to 2014 — leading the United Progressive Alliance coalition — he oversaw a period in which India's GDP growth regularly touched double digits.

But Siddaramaiah's tribute pointedly highlights what distinguished the Singh era beyond the growth numbers: the legislative architecture of rights-based welfare. It is a distinction the Congress party has consistently emphasised as its own policy identity.

RTI, RTE and the Food Security Act — three laws that changed daily lives

Siddaramaiah specifically names three landmark measures. The Right to Information Act, 2005 armed ordinary citizens with the power to demand accountability from public authorities — a transparency revolution. The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009 converted elementary schooling into a justiciable fundamental right for every child aged 6 to 14. Then came the National Food Security Act, 2013, which legally entitled up to 75 per cent of rural households and 50 per cent of urban households to subsidised food grains.

Together, these three laws represent what Siddaramaiah calls measures that 'paved the way for change in the lives of the poor and the middle class.' They are also the legislation most frequently invoked by Congress leaders to frame the 2004–2014 UPA period as one of inclusive growth — market liberalism married to social entitlement.

A personality that public life rarely sees

Beyond policy, the Chief Minister's tribute dwells on Dr Singh the man — 'a symbol of immense knowledge, simplicity, restraint, and courtesy' whose personal conduct, he says, remains a permanent model for public life. That image — the soft-spoken economist who preferred data to drama — has only grown in resonance in a noisier political era.

Siddaramaiah closes with a bow: 'Namasuttene' — I bow in respect — marking the birthday not merely as commemoration but as a moment to recommit to the values Dr Singh embodied.

On a day when Congress-ruled states across India honour the man who shaped the party's modern economic legacy, Karnataka's Chief Minister places himself squarely in that tradition — and implicitly frames the welfare laws Dr Singh championed as the benchmark against which present governance must be measured.