Manmohan Singh

As finance minister during India's 1991 balance-of-payments crisis, Singh helped turn an emergency into a wider liberalisation programme under Prime Minister P. V. Narasimha Rao. Budget measures accompanied changes to licensing, trade and foreign investment across government. The earlier reforms of the 1980s matter too: Singh's significance lies in accelerating and consolidating a shift, rather than single-handedly inventing India's market economy.