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Manmohan Singh's father may have believed his bookworm son would one day lead India, but the 71-year-old Sikh sworn in during the weekend as prime minister never dreamed he would one day hold the post.

Singh, a self-effacing man who always shunned the limelight, was pitchforked into the job of leading the world's largest democracy by the shock decision of Congress leader Sonia Gandhi to turn down the role after she led the party to a stunning upset win over the ruling Hindu nationalists.

India’s President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam (C) new Prime Minister Manmohan Singh (5R) and Congress Party President Sonia Gandhi (4R) stand with new Congress-led government ministers after a swearing in cermony at The Presidential Palace in New Delhi, 22 May 2004. Manmohan Singh, a Sikh who is the first non-Hindu prime minister of India, read and signed an oath in the presence of Indian President Abdul Kalam, the ceremonial head of state, under glittering chandeliers in the 340-room presidential palace. AFP PHOTO

No-one doubts the ability of the bespectacled leader, who has managed in the murky world of Indian politics to earn the reputation of "Mr. Clean's Mr. Clean," to steer Asia's third-largest economy, one of the world's fastest-growing.

He, after all, as finance minister in the early 1990s, initiated the sea change that opened up an inward-looking economy to the world, earning him the sobriquet of India's economic "liberator."

But it may be tougher for the technocrat and academic, who has never held elected office, to handle the notorious rough and tumble of Indian politics, especially at the helm of a fractious communist-backed alliance, analysts say.

However, Singh, who is mainly Hindu India's first prime minister from a religious minority, said recently he had "come to realise that politics, after all is the art of the possible. And sometimes, you have to compromise."

Born in 1932 in the dusty mud-house village of Gah in what is now Pakistan, he moved to the holy Sikh city of Amritsar in northern India as a teenager around the time the subcontinent was split by the departing British colonial rulers into mainly Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan.

He was so determined to get an education he would study at night under streetlights because it was so noisy in the joint family home where he was one of 10 siblings, his brother, Surjit Singh, told AFP.

"Our father always used to say Manmohan will be the prime minister of India since he stuck out among the 10 children... he always had his nose in a book."

Manmohan Singh, a married father of three daughters, who favours sky blue turbans, home-spun white kurta-pyjamas and a spartan lifestyle, won grants to attend Oxford and Cambridge.

He had worked at almost every level of the Indian civil service when he was tapped by then Congress prime minister P.V. Narasimha Rao to reel India back from the worst financial crisis in its history. In 1991 hard currency reserves had sunk so low, India was on the brink of defaulting on its foreign loans.

Singh unleashed sweeping change that broke sharply with India's Soviet-style state-directed economy. He began the process of abolishing what was known as the "license raj", a system of economic management ruled by government monopolies, quotas and permits that dictated what firms could make.

He devalued the rupee to spur exports, loosened foreign investment rules, opened oil refining, telecommunications and the stock exchanges, slashed taxes and sought to cut through red tape ensnaring companies.

Foreign investors rushed in, seeing India as one of the last virgin capitalist frontiers. Inflation halved to 8.5 percent from 17 percent; it now stands at just over four percent.

Known as a staunch Gandhi loyalist, when Sonia Gandhi took over the reins of Congress after a disastrous election rout, Singh was in the party's front ranks, always at her elbow as an advisor.

In his acceptance speech after he was appointed premier, he quoted India's first prime minister, Jawaharalal Nehru, saying he wanted to serve "the teeming millions of the country."

"This is a mandate for change, for strengthening the secular foundation of our republic, to carry forward the process of social and economic change which benefits the poorest sections of our community, particularly our farmers and our workers," Singh told reporters Saturday after the glittering swearing-in ceremony.

When Congress lost office in 1996 and he stepped down as finance minister, Singh bemoaned that "so much more could have been done."