Former Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has died at the age of 92.

Singh was one of India’s longest-serving prime ministers and was considered an architect of important liberalizing economic reforms, as prime minister from 2004 to 2014 and before that as finance minister.

He was reportedly admitted to a hospital in the capital Delhi after his health deteriorated.

Among those who paid tribute to Singh on Thursday was Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who wrote on social media: “India mourns the loss of one of its most respected leaders.”

Modi said that Singh’s “wisdom and humility were always visible in their interactions” and that during his time as prime minister he made “extensive efforts to improve people’s lives.”

Priyanka Gandhi, the daughter of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and a member of the Congress Party, said Singh was “truly egalitarian, wise, strong-willed and courageous till the end”.

Her brother Rahul, who leads the Congress, said he had “lost a mentor and leader”.

Singh was the first Indian leader since Jawaharlal Nehru to be re-elected after a full first term and the first Sikh to hold the country’s top job. He publicly apologized in Parliament for the 1984 riots in which about 3,000 Sikhs were killed.

But his second term was marred by a series of corruption allegations that plagued his administration. Many say the scandals were partly responsible for his Congress party’s crushing defeat in the 2014 general elections.

Singh was born on September 26, 1932, in an abandoned village in the Punjab province of undivided India, where there was no water or electricity.

After attending Panjab University, he completed a Masters at the University of Cambridge and then a DPhil at Oxford.

While studying at Cambridge, Singh was bothered by the lack of money, his daughter Daman Singh wrote in a book about her parents.

“His tuition and living costs were around £600 a year. The Panjab University scholarship earned him about 160 pounds. Otherwise he was dependent on his father. Manmohan made sure to live very stingily. Meals in the dining room were subsidized at two shillings sixpence, relatively inexpensive.”

Daman Singh recalled that her father was “completely helpless in the house and could not boil an egg or turn on the television.”

Singh rose to political prominence as India’s finance minister in 1991, taking office as the country plunged into bankruptcy.

His unexpected appointment capped a long and illustrious career as an academic and civil servant – serving as an economic adviser to the government and becoming governor of India’s central bank.

In his inaugural speech as finance minister, he quoted Victor Hugo as saying: “No power in the world can stop an idea whose time has come.”

This served as the starting point for an ambitious and unprecedented program of economic reform: he cut taxes, devalued the rupee, privatized state-owned enterprises, and encouraged foreign investment.

The economy revived, industry recovered, inflation was contained, and growth rates remained consistently high throughout the 1990s.

Manmohan Singh was very conscious of his lack of political base. “It’s nice to be a statesman, but to be a statesman in a democracy you first have to win elections,” he once said.

When he tried to win the Indian lower house election in 1999, he was defeated. Instead, he sat in the upper house, elected by his own Congress party.

The same thing happened in 2004, when Singh was first appointed prime minister after Congress president Sonia Gandhi declined the post – apparently to protect the party from damaging attacks on her Italian heritage. However, critics claimed that Sonia Gandhi was the real source of power during his time as prime minister and that he was never really in charge.

The greatest achievement of his first five-year term was lifting India out of nuclear isolation by signing a groundbreaking agreement that secured access to American nuclear technology.

But the deal came at a price: the government’s communist allies withdrew their support after protesting against it, and the Congress had to make up lost numbers by winning the support of another party amid accusations of vote-buying.

As a consensus builder, Singh led a coalition of sometimes difficult, assertive and potentially fractious regional coalition allies and supporters.

Although he earned respect for his integrity and intelligence, he also had a reputation for being soft and indecisive. Some critics claimed that the pace of reforms had slowed and he had failed to achieve the same momentum he had as finance minister.

When Singh led the Congress to a second, decisive election victory in 2009, he promised that the party would “rise to the occasion”.

But the shine soon began to fade and his second term ended up in the news mostly for the wrong reasons: multiple scandals involving his cabinet ministers that reportedly cost the country billions of dollars, a parliament blocked by the opposition, and a huge political paralysis that resulted to a severe economic downturn.

LK Advani, a senior leader of the rival BJP party, called Singh India’s “weakest prime minister.”

Manmohan Singh defended his record, saying his government had worked with “utmost commitment and dedication to the country and the well-being of its people.”

Singh inherited the pragmatic foreign policy of his two predecessors.

He continued the peace process with Pakistan – although that process was hampered by attacks attributed to Pakistani militants, culminating in the November 2008 Mumbai bombing.

He tried to end the border dispute with China by brokering a deal to reopen the Nathu La Pass into Tibet, which had been closed for more than 40 years.

Singh increased financial support to Afghanistan and became the first Indian leader to visit the country in nearly 30 years.

He also angered many opposition politicians by appearing to cut ties with India’s old ally Iran.

A hard-working former academic and bureaucrat, he was known for his reserve and always kept a low profile. His social media account was mostly known for boring posts and had a limited number of followers.

A man of few words, his quiet demeanor still earned him many admirers.

In response to questions about a coal scandal involving the illegal awarding of licenses worth billions of dollars, he defended his silence on the issue, saying it was “better than thousands of answers.”

In 2015 he was summoned to court to answer allegations of criminal conspiracy, breach of trust and corruption offences. An angry Singh told reporters he was “open to legal scrutiny” and that “the truth will prevail.”

After his time as Prime Minister, despite his increasing age, Singh remained deeply involved in contemporary issues as a senior leader of the main opposition Congress party.

In August 2020, he told the BBC in a rare interview that India needed to take three steps “immediately” to contain the economic damage of the coronavirus pandemic, which has plunged the country’s economy into recession.

The government must provide direct cash assistance to people, provide capital to businesses and clean up the financial sector, he said.

History will remember Singh for lifting India out of economic and nuclear isolation, although some historians believe he should have retired earlier.

“I really believe that history will be kinder to me than the contemporary media or even the opposition parties in parliament,” he told an interviewer in 2014.

Singh is survived by his wife and three daughters.