“I won’t lose my sleep over the stock market,” Manmohan Singh, then finance minister, had famously said in Parliament in 1992. The stock market was witnessing fluctuations then. Personally, too, Singh wouldn’t have lost a night’s sleep over share prices, because when it came to investing, India’s biggest economic reformer trusted old-school instruments like fixed deposits and post office schemes.

Manmohan Singh, India’s Prime Minister from 2004 to 2014 and whose political record remains unblemished, passed away on December 26. He was 92.

It is interesting to see the financial investments made by Singh, who unfettered India’s economy, moving the country away from Nehruvian socialism.

It was in 1991 that Singh took oath as the Finance Minister in the Cabinet of Prime Minister Narasimha Rao. Both Rao and Singh would go for a series of groundbreaking economic reforms, moving India’s economy from a state-controlled and protectionist model to a more market-oriented, liberalised framework.

Singh was a master in economics, having earned a First Class Honours degree from the University of Cambridge and a DPhil from Oxford University.

He joined government services as an economic advisor in the commerce ministry in 1971, and served as the Chief Economic Advisor (1972-1976), the Governor of the Reserve Bank of India (1982-1985), and Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission (1985-1987).

In January 1991, the year Singh became the Finance Minister and unbound the economy, the benchmark Sensex was at 999. It almost doubled by the end of that year on the back of Singh’s Budget announcements. It was with Singh as the Prime Minister that the Sensex crossed 10,000 points in 2006.

However, Manmohan Singh trusted bank fixed deposits and post office savings schemes for investment and reinvestment to grow his wealth.

Singh has been a Rajya Sabha member from Assam since 1991. It was only in 2019 that the Congress nominated him from Rajasthan after the party’s Assembly poll drubbing in Assam in 2016.

A look at Singh’s Rajya Sabha poll affidavits reveal how India’s magic reformer invested, and how his wealth grew.

The assets of Manmohan Singh and his wife, Gursharan Kaur, were worth Rs 15 crore, according to his 2019 election affidavit.

They own two houses — one in Delhi’s Vasant Kunj and the other in Chandigarh’s Sector 11B. The market value of the two houses has been revealed to be Rs 7 crore.

Kaur owns 150 grams of gold, whose value has been declared to be over Rs 3 lakh.

They have over Rs 7 crore invested in fixed deposits or as bank savings. Another Rs 12 lakh is in the National Savings Scheme (NSS) in a post office.

A better analysis of Manmohan Singh’s investments is possible from his 2013 poll affidavit filed from Assam. Singh was the Prime Minister then.

Singh’s assets were worth Rs 11 crore then.

The 2013 poll affidavit for the Rajya Sabha election shows that Singh and Kaur have eight fixed deposits (FDs), ranging from an amount of Rs 1 lakh to Rs 95 lakh.

The FDs and bank savings amount to over Rs 4 crore. Their post office savings were at Rs 4 lakh.

The market value of the two houses — in Delhi and Chandigarh — were shown to be worth Rs 7 crore, the same as in 2019.

That means the gain in assets made by Manmohan Singh from Rs 11 crore in 2013 to Rs 15 crore in 2019 was on the back of investing and reinvesting in the FDs and some post office NSS.

How Singh reinvested in FDs is clear from just one example of February 2, 2013. This is also a classic example of financial planning and discipline.

On February 2, 2013, Singh invested in three FDs worth over Rs 2 crore. All the three would mature on February 2, 2016, and be re-invested on maturity.

Just the three FDs would have grown by Rs 62 lakh in three years, and get re-invested. That is how he managed to grow his wealth by at least Rs 4 crore in 6 years without getting into any market-linked investments.

In April 2024, Singh retired from active politics after his Rajya Sabha term came to an end. Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge said the former Prime Minister would remain a “hero” to the middle class and the aspirational youth.

It was Manmohan Singh’s reforms that opened India’s doors to foreign direct investment (FDI), which resulted in the stock markets booming. Financial experts suggest investing in stocks or mutual funds to beat inflation. But here was the father of India’s economic reforms trusting old investment instruments to keep growing his wealth. This investment model won’t suit everyone. But it suited Mr Clean Manmohan Singh, who refused to lose sleep over stock market fluctuations.