P Vaidyanathan Iyer: The impatience of being Chidambaram

RAISINA HILL

P Chidambaram

Just about a fortnight ago, the core Budget team in North Block was finalising the exact wording of a new scheme on traditional water harvesting and irrigation to be announced by Finance Minister P Chidambaram on July 8.

The discussion between Finance Secretary D C Gupta, Chief Economic Advisor Ashok Lahiri and Expenditure Secretary D Swarup lasted about three hours.

A North Block source had two interesting interpretations of this episode. One, that the core Budget team was working overtime to present a perfect speech for Chidambaram, who is a stickler for perfection. Two, the team had all the time in the world to spare precious hours just before the Budget to deliberate a mundane proposal.

Actually, nobody is quite sure how clued in the secretaries in the finance ministry are on the Budget. Chidambaram, if one were to believe his contacts, does a lot of the work on his own. First, because he knows quite a lot about issues, and second, because he generally thinks he is right.

Unlike his predecessor Jaswant Singh, who had no qualms about expressing his displeasure about the quality of his senior bureaucrats, Chidambaram prefers to keep his counsel. This, however, did not stop him from letting his key officers know that he had little patience for mediocrity.

In his first one-to-one meeting with key secretaries, he demanded fresh ideas to mobilise additional resources, kick-start investment and cut unproductive expenditure.

An insider says that a secretary, in his/her first few meetings with the minister told him, "Sir, you know more than me anyway," and thus, managed to stave off any big expectations Chidamabaram might have had.

As it turned out, the finance minister spent more time with officers who were sharp and had a sound understanding of current issues and their implication on the Budget. And he spent less time "" despite their seniority "" with those who did not have much to offer him, in terms of ingenuity in ideas. If whispers on the corridors are to be believed, at least three of his five secretaries might be replaced after the Budget.

Insiders say that Swarup has been Chidambaram's closest advisor, particularly since the Budget had a lot to do with numbers and the expenditure secretary is known to be a man of detail. "You can trust him with numbers," a source said.

Lahiri, sound in public finance, has also been closely involved in the exercise, with Chidambaram taking his opinion on several issues, including the road map on subsidies that the Common Minimum Programme has promised within the next three months.

Chidambaram also displayed his impatience at pre-Budget meetings with industry groups. In a discussion with the mutual fund industry, he actually set the rules of the game. He asked top honchos to elaborate on an issue each and not to iterate a point.

A mutual fund CEO recalled that Chidambaram, in fact, asked them to be precise. He quoted the minister as having said, "More often than not, I would have already grasped the issue before you proceed to your next sentence."

After the hour-long meeting, Chidambaram was clearly unhappy. His disappointment stemmed from the fact that the mutual funds merely clamoured for concessions for the sector instead of suggesting measures to rev up the capital markets as a whole.

With his officers, he displayed a similar impatience. Often, he would ask them to convince him about the relevance of a particular initiative or programme even if it was introduced by the earlier government.

"You have to convince him, otherwise the scheme is off," says a finance ministry official, adding that they weren't given a great deal of time to make their point, although he was not unreasonable.