New Delhi, Feb. 28 -- In his parting speech as prime minister, Manmohan Singh hoped that history would judge him more kindly. He was right; he usually was, for this was a man who measured his words by the precision of facts and figures, not the wild claims of political theatre. Those of us who came of age in the 1990s and after, who found careers in industries that barely existed before he wielded his pen across the licence raj, know this more intimately than most.

Not for him were the slogans and swagger of everyday politics. He had a job on hand: To pull India out of its economic dark age into the modern world. The seeds of that transformation were sown on 24 July 1991, when the former professor of international trade stood before Parl...