Writing the reforms script as author in Opposition, Finance Minister in Govt

Express news service ,January 23

New Delhi, January 22Benefit is to be had while serving in Opposition and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh used the release of his Finance Minister P. Chidambaram’s book to urge the current political opposition to utilize it carefully.

Just as the author had done.

Chidambaram’s book, A View From the Outside: Why Good Economics Works for Everyone, published by Penguin Books India in collaboration with The Indian Express group), is a compilation of articles he wrote for The Indian Express and The Financial Express rom 2002 until the summer of 2004, when he got his current assignment in the UPA government.

Besides interrogating the government of the day, the NDA, on many facets of governance, the essays grapple with the gamut of economic issues before India.

To a select gathering at his official residence, Prime Minister Singh said: “I think being in opposition is always a good thing for politicians. It is a humbling experience. It is also a time to reflect on the policies practised when one is in power, their positive and negative repercussions and the course corrections that may be needed. It is a time to observe the working of another government which has come to office after having defeated an incumbent and try to understand whether they are able to put their chance in office to good use.”

Chidambaram’s columns cover part of the NDA interregnum, between his earlier stint as finance minister in the UF government (1996-8) and the current one. Said Singh: “While not all politicians use the spare time to good use, this book tells us that Chidambaram certainly did so.”

Then he added: “I think those who are now in Opposition should learn from the way Chidambaram handled spare time on his hands and make better use of their time. Though I am not sure how many of them can write as well as Shri Chidambaram does.”

Even the most ardent reformers, the Prime Minister said, find it difficult to “obliterate their own empires of power and patronage.”

But that is what Chidambaram did as Commerce Minister, he said. “I think he was one of the few Ministers who presided over the shrinking of his own Ministry, disproving the usual notions of political economy that all politicians and bureaucrats aim to expand their economic empires. He closed down sections of the ministry that had been rendered redundant” by changes in industrial and trade policy.

Among those in the audience were Chidambaram’s cabinet colleagues (Home Minister Shivraj Patil), economists (Raghuram Rajan of the University of Chicago, Jagdish Bhagwati of Columbia University, RBI Governor YV Reddy), members of his family (his mother and his wife), and publishers (chairman and chief executive of Penguin, John Makinson).

Singh recalled Chidambaram’s commitment to economic reform from the very outset: “He was a great source of strength and support to me in 1991, during the early years of economic reform and liberalization...he remained committed to our agenda of fiscal reform even after our Government changed and he became part of the United Front ministry. I think it was his budget of 1997 that was called a ‘dream budget...’ . I think that made it difficult for his successors, including himself now, to come with another such budget!”

Invoking John Maynard Keynes’ famous statement that practical men are “slaves of some defunct economist”, the PM said, with a smile, that Chidambaram was therefore a “controlled experiment.”

Speaking on the occasion, Chidambaram said that the “view from the inside was equally interesting” and that if anyone noticed contradictions between what he had written and his current policymaking, he wished to be “forgiven.” He highlighted the challenges of dealing with a section of the political establishment and society that doesn’t agree with what the government does.

Penguin chairman Makinson said the book was a testimony to the exciting ferment of ideas in India as being a crucial aspect of its democratic process. And that Chidambaram symbolised what Amartya Sen called “the argumentative Indian” at its finest. Welcoming the audience, Shekhar Gupta, Editor-in-Chief of The Indian Express, said Chidambaram was perhaps the first of the politician-reformers and that’s why his ideas — when he was not in power — are crucial to current debates in economics and politics.