Prime minister Manmoh-an Singh is leaving behind a financially ravaged Greece and economically mauled Europe with brave words of correction and comfort, but deeply concerned that the mess that Cannes was supp-osed to clear does not upset his applecart back home in India.

Through his engagements here at the Palais des Festivals, venue of the just concluded summit of heads of government of 20 industrialised and emerging econ-omies, Singh has sounded caution, pressing for urgency in confronting long-term, goal-oriented development objectives even as European leaders get bogged down at home, ranting about alternative solutions to the problems of their own making.

In this scenario, where Greece single-handedly hijacked the agenda, Singh’s concerns about long-term stability and India’s own interests may have gone unheard. His scheduled meeting with French president and G20 convenor Nicolas Sarkozy did not go through even after a postponement. His scheduled “pull asides” with the presidents of the European Council and European Commission, Herman van Rompuy and Jose Manuel Barosso, also did not materialise on Friday, with the EU leadership caught in fire-fighting the euro zone crisis. That must have been a big disappointment for India and the prime minister personally, as only two years ago he was feted by the G20 leadership as the global guru of economic change.

Asked at the press conference if he managed to drop a word of advice to euro zone crisis managers, Singh said he did manage to snatch a moment with his friend German chancellor Angela Mer-kel and advised her on the need for integrating fiscal union among EU members that should have happened concurrently with the monetary union.

Singh also said he advised Merkel on the need to make the European Central bank as the banker of last resort to bail out stressed economies and member-states of EU. There has been a clamour for such an option by both global and European pundits looking to fix the euro zone problem, as ECB, under present laws, cannot lend to individual member- states.

Asked how relevant the current Greek and euro zone crises were to India, Singh reiterated his concerns, stating that in an increasingly integrated global economy, India faced major development concerns in the wake of the euro zone crisis, as EU was India’s largest trading partner and an important source of technology and capital flows.

“If the financial market is disturbed by the current crisis, capital and technology flows would be affected,” he said. He also said the short- term trade credit to Indian entrepreneurs would be hampered if European ban-ks were to collapse.

Singh said he had built a good friendship with both Chinese president Hu Jintao and premier Wen Jiabao. Hu, Singh said, told him at the meeting of the Brics leadership at the summit, that he was pleasantly surprised to know that China and India shared the same thinking on resolving the current global crisis.

As things stand, the prime minister’s biggest worry seemed to avert “a race to the bottom,” by the current crisis in Europe.

Singh voiced his concerns before Indian media about the global economy and its adverse consequences that stare at India before emplaning for return journey back home.

Through the past two days Singh has reiterated that the world must face the challenge of orchestrating a broadbased recovery and sustainable growth both in industrialised and developing countries even as Europe seeks to sort out its short-term problems of instability.

Singh should know. Way back in 1991, he, then finance minister, steered his country on a long journey to economic freedom and sustainable high growth after being faced with dire prospects of an economically stressed nation. In the 20 years of reforms, Singh has created a robust model that has made India consistently the world’s second fastest growing economy.

Here at Cannes Singh has championed the cause of advancing the mutual assessment process (MAP) within the G20 framework at which India is co-chair. “We face the difficult task of balancing the requirement for giving a push to growth in the short term and the task of restoring fiscal sustainability over the medium term. These call for very different policy prescriptions,” Singh has said.

MAP, Singh said, must focus on structural reforms in all G20 countries to increase efficiency and competitiveness over the medium term. This would help revive the animal spirit of investors, which is necessary to allow economies to shift the burden of sustaining demand from the public to private sector.

Singh touted India’s resilience as the foundation of its phenomenal growth story that he has scripted for the past two decades. “We in India are taking steps to ensure a return to high growth. Our economy has slowed down in the current year and GDP growth is likely to be between 7.6 per cent and 7.8 per cent. Like many other emerging market eco-nomies India too is experiencing high levels of inflation. “We hope to go back to higher growth in 2012-13, together with a moderation in inflation,” he said.

The prime minister said India’s medium-term strategy focuses on a revival of investment, especially in infrastructure, and continuing efforts to reduce fiscal deficit through improved revenue collection expected from tax reforms.

Singh also captioned that as G20 grapples with short-term problems of crisis management; it must not lose sight of the developmental needs of developing econ-omies. After a long period, these economies experienced broadbased acceleration of growth, making them potentially significant contributors to global growth. This, he said, was now thr-eatened by the slowing trend in developed econ-omies and uncertainties in financial markets. The world, Singh said, needs to find credible ways of stre-ngthening these growth impulses.

Singh highlighted the need for measures to redirect global savings so that they could be leveraged to increase investments in developing countries. This would help offset the moderation in private demand in industrialised countries.

He drew attention to the need for multilateral development banks to play a key role in mobilising and deploying global savings. G20 should, therefore, raise its level of ambition for these institutions so that they can play the kind of transformational role they played in the post-War period.

Singh said G20 had made considerable progress towards strengthening global financial regulation. This should be carried forward through follow-up measures. He stressed the need for common standards to be implemented simultaneously in all jurisdictions in an integrated world, to avoid a race to the bottom. Or else, financial activity will migrate from the tightly regulated sector to less regulated jurisdictions.