"My top most priority is to deal with India's massive social and economic problems, so that chronic poverty, ignorance and disease can be conquered in a reasonably short period of time"
About this Quote
The real work is in the careful calibration of ambition. "Conquered" is martial language, but it's immediately tempered by "reasonably short period of time", a hedge that signals both seriousness and an awareness of India's scale. He's not promising miracles; he's promising measurable progress. That pragmatism is itself a political argument: that governance is competence, not charisma.
Context matters. Singh's public persona was forged as an economist and reformer, associated with liberalization and a belief that growth can be translated into welfare - if the state stays focused. The subtext is a quiet rebuke to symbolic politics: India cannot eat rhetoric. At the same time, the line also reveals the vulnerability of technocratic faith. "Deal with" suggests manageability, yet these are problems tangled in caste, patronage, weak public services, and uneven development. The quote works because it sounds like a plan, not a poem - and because it implicitly asks voters to judge power by outcomes, a radical standard in a country where performance is often obscured by identity and spectacle.
Quote Details
| Topic | Vision & Strategy |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite | Cite this Quote |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Singh, Manmohan. (n.d.). My top most priority is to deal with India's massive social and economic problems, so that chronic poverty, ignorance and disease can be conquered in a reasonably short period of time. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/my-top-most-priority-is-to-deal-with-indias-156716/
Chicago Style
Singh, Manmohan. "My top most priority is to deal with India's massive social and economic problems, so that chronic poverty, ignorance and disease can be conquered in a reasonably short period of time." FixQuotes. Accessed February 2, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/my-top-most-priority-is-to-deal-with-indias-156716/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"My top most priority is to deal with India's massive social and economic problems, so that chronic poverty, ignorance and disease can be conquered in a reasonably short period of time." FixQuotes, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/my-top-most-priority-is-to-deal-with-indias-156716/. Accessed 2 Feb. 2026.





