Most of the times, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has been described as one of the most qualified head of the governments in the world. He has a doctorate degree in economics from Nuffield College at Oxford University in 1962. The London Times once reported that Manmohan Singh was a serial winner of academic prizes at the University at that time.

Now, the Britain’s designated Prime Minister Gordon Brown has posed a challenge to the stature of Manmohan Singh as he has also a doctoral degree in History from Edinburgh University. Brown billed to take over the Prime Minister chair from Tony Blair on June 27. Brown had entered in the university at the age of 16 and earned the status to become the youngest student since World War II.

Both the leaders are doing the work what they had done on the papers in the university’s days. Manmohan Singh had done his thesis on India’s export trends and prospects for self-sustained growth. The paper was a great critique of India’s inward-oriented trade policies at that time in India. Later, he became the man behind unleashing economic reforms and started ending the Licence raj from 1991.

Similarly, Gordon Brownhad had done his doctoral research on the labor Party under the title ‘the Labour party and political change in Scotland 1918-29′. Later, he moved to become a brawny of Scottish Labour and crafted new labor agenda with Tony Blair.

Manmohan Singh became the Union finance minister in India while Brown became Britain’s chancellor of the exchequer. Both engineered rightward shift of policies in their parties. Manmohan Singh initiated the policy of export-pessimism in Indian governance and made India more business friendly. On the other hand, Brown made Labor policies more acceptable to business classes and middle classes by cutting high-taxation policies and high-spending policies.

However, the biggest question has risen in both India and Britain that is it right to place academicians at the top place in the governance. Does politics gain or lose from placing academicians at the top level of the policy-making. The political opponents of both, Manmohan Singh in India and of Brown in Britain, say that they are too bookish to influence politics.

They cannot be a mass leader despite of having great ability to put the nation on right path of development. This is the biggest reason that Brown played second fiddle to more charismatic leader, Tony Blair in Britain. Similarly, Manmohan Singh needs blessings from Congress president Sonia, who recently find place in the Time magazine’s list most influential person in the world, to retain his position in the government. Still, the question is same both in Britain and India, at this point of time, Do these countries really need mass leaders or the academicians for overall development.

Inputs: TOI