Singh, India's cerebral PM, glides to victory again

Manmohan Singh, who is set to return as India's prime minister with an electoral mandate to revive the country's economic expansion, has always appeared a reluctant public figure.

During his first stint as premier, the softly-spoken Singh, who has earned the reputation of being the "Mr Clean's Mr Clean" in India's murky politics, steered the economy through a period of nine percent growth.

The boom has slowed due to the global financial crisis but growth is still targeted at around six percent this year, which would make India the world's second fastest expanding economy after China.

The Congress party's biggest win since 1991 now is seen as giving Singh, 76, a clear hand to press ahead decisively with steps to put India back on a higher growth trajectory to lift millions from extreme poverty.

"The people of India have spoken and have spoken with great clarity," he said Saturday.

Singh, a Sikh who favours sky blue turbans, is known as a strong advocate of economic reform.

As finance minister in the early 1990s, he initiated the sea change that began the opening of India's inward-looking economy to the world, earning him the sobriquet of the country's economic "liberator."

But the tense coalition politics of his last term in which the communists fiercely opposed any reforms put the brakes on moves to free up the economy.

A former governor of the International Monetary Fund, Singh became the first Sikh prime minister of the world's largest democracy when the party took power in 2004 after a long stint in the political wilderness.

Born in 1932 in Gah in Peshawar in what is now Pakistan, he moved to the holy Sikh city of Amritsar in northern India in his early teens when the sub-continent was partitioned at the end of British rule.

His father, who was a dry-fruit seller with 10 children, used to joke that Manmohan would become prime minister because he studied so hard but he never realised his words would come true.

After a heart bypass operation in January, Singh took only a minor role in the elections, leaving the campaigning to Rahul Gandhi, the heir of the Nehru-Gandhi clan, and his mother Sonia Gandhi, who is president of the Congress party.

Now Singh -- a married man with three daughters -- is expected by many observers to step aside midway through his new five-year mandate for Rahul.

Singh has never been elected to office, with his only attempt to contest elections in 1999 ending in defeat. He sits in parliament's appointed upper house, nominated by Congress.

But he has made history by being the first premier to be returned to office after serving a full five-year term since India's first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru.

The partnership between the elegant Italian-born Sonia, 62, and the elderly Sikh -- nicknamed the "odd couple" by the media -- has been subject to frequent whispering campaigns that the pair do not see eye-to-eye.

But Sonia has always insisted that she and Singh, whom she nominated for the job after stage-managing the party's return to power in 2004, have worked in harmony since Congress took office.

"I adore the prime minister for the manner in which he handles the government," said Sonia told reporters.

There are cynics who say Sonia opted for Singh because his self-effacing character meant he was unlikely to ever overshadow the charismatic Gandhis.

Singh said Saturday he hoped to persuade Rahul, 38, to serve in the cabinet and during the campaign described him as having "all the qualities a good PM should have."