India, April 3 -- Earlier this week, former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh retired from the Rajya Sabha, putting an end to a three-decade-long career in Indian politics. As prime minister between 2004 and 2014, he ensured the historic Indo-US nuclear agreement, transformed the social welfare framework with a bouquet of rights-based legislation and ushered in a slew of reforms including Direct Benefit Transfer and Aadhaar. However, the 91-year-old will be remembered as the architect of economic liberalisation in India in the early 1990s.

In March 1986, Singh wrote an article for the Hindustan Times titled, 'A Developmental View'. By this time, the keen economist had already served as chief economic advisor in the finance ministry, a member...