N K Singh looks fleetingly at my thinning hair and continues: "Homoeopathy has an excellent cure for baldness. You have to mix 10 drops each of Cochlearia Armoracia and Baryta Carbi with olive oil, apply it before sleeping and wash it off in the morning. Do it three times a week, and you will soon have a full head of hair." As proof of the effectiveness of his prescription, he invites me to scan his own enviable shock of thick hair. Not a bald patch in sight, I admit, and wonder at how much I am benefiting from this lunch.
For we had barely sat down at the Dakshin, Delhi's newest South Indian restaurant at Welcomgroup's Marriott (in distant Saket), when N K told me that he had already dispatched to my office, with his compliments, two compact discs of recitals in the Singh home, done a quarter century apart. The first was by Nikhil Banerjee and the second Kishori Amonkar. "Raag Bageshwari and Raag Jaijaiwanti are my favourites," he says. He then goes on to discuss how paintings done to match one of the ragas doesn't really reflect the precise mood of the music, until you watch the paintings while actually listening to the music.
I had thought, while looking forward to the lunch, that I would invite ask N K Singh, veteran of many years in the finance ministry and then in the Prime Minister's Office before landing on his present perch as a member of the Planning Commission, to be indiscreet about some of the things he has seen, heard and done over 37 years in the government. But he has lifted the occasion beyond the plane of a Delhi gossip session, by plunging into a discussion of his hobbies and side interests.
And, as soon as he realises that I don't know where to get his magic potion for baldness, he adds, "I will send across the medicines later today." The homoeopathic lesson does not end with curing baldness for N K says, half-conspiratorially, that he also has a cure for impotence that is better than the stuff which Pfizer produces. "But I'm not going to give you the name, because you'll publish it and it will add to our population problem." All this with the same straight face and declamatory manner that one has seen him deploy on weightier occasions.
The waiter intrudes with a question on bottled water and tells us we will get mini-dosas on the house. Iyer dosas, he seems to call them. Do you have Iyenger dosas too, I ask. But no, Iyer merely refers to the gent who thought of the idea, we are told. And we soon get two each, flavoured differently, along with five kinds of chutneys. N K has decided he is vegetarian, so we opt for Malabar parathas with the house's tomato-dal combination (good enough to rival Bukhara's dal at the Maurya), to be followed by appams with vegetable stew.
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As we wait, sipping iced coconut water, N K plunges into his other pastime: roses. "I have the best rose garden in Patna, with 2,500 roses," he tells me. "I have sent a manuscript, along with 250 slides, to National Geographic; I'm waiting to see if they will publish it as a book." There follows a detailed description of a rose called Peace, which apparently has the best prize-winning record at the American Rose Society's shows. N K is researching whether the rose does as well in a tropical climate.
His interest in botany is inherited (his father, T P Singh, apart from being finance secretary before he was moved out for opposing Indira Gandhi's bank nationalisation in 1969, was also president of the Indian Rose Society). But N K has broadened his botanical interest to include flowering trees. "My daughter once asked me to choose my ideal holiday, and I told her I wanted to go to Myanmar to see a certain flowering tree." There follows a botanical name, a detailed description, and then a mini-dissertation on how Delhi has not exploited to the full its potential for flowering trees. A magnolia variant in North America gets him even more eloquent, and I am glad we are interrupted by the arrival of the first course.
The stew turns out to be bland, and I wish I had been my non-vegetarian self and ordered the standard chicken stew to go with the appams. But the rest of the fare holds up Welcomgroup's well-deserved reputation for running great restaurants. N K pronounces the food delicious (he has been missing his favourite haunt, the Dasaprakash, which has been closed down at the Ambassador hotel), and tolerates the waiter intervening later to instruct him on how to handle the appams: the stew must be poured on, the appam must get soaked in it, and then it is really out of this world, we are told.
More advice follows when the South Indian coffee comes: pour it from the metal tumbler into the metal bowl and then drink it, because the tumbler is too hot to hold. In between, we've been persuaded to have coconut kheer as well.
The list of pastimes isn't over by any means, because there is photography. While in Japan as minister (economic) at the embassy, N K took time off to go wandering with his Hasselblad, zoom and two tripods (one for the zoom, because it is so heavy), occasionally switching to a 35 mm Leica. "You have to decide how much of the frame you want to fill," N K explains by way of elaborating on the striking shots of Japanese cherry blossoms, fireworks displays and so on that he exhibited later at the Jehangir gallery in Mumbai. Within an hour of returning to the office, a messenger brings across the exhibition brochure.
And then there is classical music, of course, Indian and Western. All his friends know N K as the only government officer who has wired up any office he occupied, and listened (typically) to Herbert von Karajan's interpretation of the Emperor Waltz (part of a 12-CD set on 150 years of the Vienna Philharmonic), even as he held grim meetings on the latest revenue shortfall.
I manage, finally, to get him to turn to the government. N K developed the reputation of being one of the Government of India's most go-getting bureaucrats. But now, he promptly veers off into asking questions about the recession and when it will end (quoting, along the way, Schumpeter, Nurkse and Arthur Lewis); and when he is dragged back yet again in the hope of some anecdotes to feed readers who haven't shared the food, drops two little stories.
One concerns Chidambaram's 1997 Budget idea of having three simple, low rates of income tax: 10, 20 and 30 per cent. Chidambaram is nervous about Prime Minister Deve Gowda's reaction, and lets N K (then the revenue secretary) field the proposal at a South Block meeting. Gowda asks his principal secretary what he thinks, and quickly gives his clearance. "Don't be afraid," he reassures N K Singh cheerfully, as they prepare to leave.
That yields a rare insight: "The reform process has been seen as benefiting the better-off. So a minister who belongs to the upper classes is hesitant about such radical measures, for fear of being labelled pro-rich. But someone like Deve Gowda, who speaks for farmers, has no inhibitions. If it needs doing, he gives the green signal."
What about reforms under coalition governments? That yields another insight: "If you were in Indira Gandhi's Cabinet or PMO, all the Cabinet ministers would be trying to find out from the PMO, what exactly the PM wanted on a particular agenda item; and at the Cabinet meeting they would then speak in anticipation of the prime minister's wishes. Today, it's the other way round. If you are in the PMO, your job is to ask the various ministers their views and try and evolve a consensus before a Cabinet meeting. It is much more democratic today, this is the real Cabinet system working."
What about the effect that corporate lobbying has on government policy? How much policy distortion results? He thinks for a minute, and says: "Yes, such lobbying does affect policy. But most of the time, one lobby manages to counter-act the other. So what usually emerges is unbiased and in the public interest." Then he adds: "Sometimes, you forge policy that benefits the most efficient company, even if there has been no lobbying."
Considering that he gave up a brief career teaching economics at his St.Stephen's alma mater, and had initially wanted to join the foreign service (his parents thought his debating skills would be useful!), has he been happy with his career? "Yes, I wanted to play a role in shaping economic policy, and in that I have been successful."
So, would he want his children to join the government too? "No, because government is not what it used to be." Would he like them to stay and work in India, or go abroad? "Stay in India, because your own country gives you a social cushion that yields greater happiness than mere material well-being abroad."
There is a clarity to his answers that is enviable. So, as we ready to leave, I pop the question: "Your mother has been in politics. Would you stand for elections too, and join politics?" The clarity now gives way to opacity: "I haven't given it serious thought." Then, he repeats the answer, with emphasis on "serious".
We walk down to the lobby and wait for the cars. It's been nearly two hours, and N K Singh has emerged as discreet, of course, and as someone keen to play the role of an Indian Renaissance man. But also genuinely a man of many parts, real interests, and willing to take time and trouble over and spend money on the good things of life. Also, more interesting than you might have expected, with more subtleties of thought than his power-player image prepares you for. As Wavell said of G D Birla, you won't be bored in N K Singh's company.