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The return of Jaswant Singh

A K Bhattacharya

Jaswant Singh is India's 29th finance minister. He is the fourth "Singh" in the long illustrious list of finance ministers - after Charan Singh in 1979, V P Singh from 1984 to 1986 and Manmohan Singh from 1991 to 1996.

He is also perhaps the only finance minister who has held both the defence and external affairs portfolios at different times in the same government.

For Jaswant Singh, this is his second stint in the North Block. Before him, there were three others who also held the finance portfolio for two different terms - T T Krishnamachari (in 1957-58 and 1964-65), Morarji Desai (from 1959 to 1964 and again from 1967 to 1969) and Yashwant Sinha (in 1990-91 and again from 1998 to 2002).

And while Desai presented full budgets during both his stints and Sinha could present only an interim budget in his first stint and five full budgets in his second. Jaswant Singh has no budget to his credit so far.

His first stint lasted only 13 days because the government fell and his second stint has just begun.

In all probability, Jaswant Singh would be able to present two budgets, unless his leader, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, and the party decide to call for general elections before the scheduled end of the five-year tenure of the government.

Of these two budgets, he could expect reasonable freedom in pursuing the course as deemed desirable by him as India's finance minister. But the second budget would be too close to the general elections.

Like all his predecessors, he might also be persuaded to present a budget keeping in mind the electoral prospects of the ruling party. Thus, if Jaswant Singh were to be judged on his budget, you should do it with the one he would present on February 28, 2003.

A more immediate way of checking his performance in his new assignment would be to see how he fills up the key vacancies in the finance ministry. A finance secretary has to be appointed before August 1, because the economic affairs secretary, C M Vasudev, is due to leave for Washington as executive director on the board of the World Bank.

His predecessor presented the last budget without any officially designated finance secretary. Jaswant Singh is the kind of a person who would consider the appointment of a finance secretary a key element in his game plan.

The post of the chief economic advisor is also vacant and interviews are to be conducted soon. Singh would now have an opportunity to decide on his chief economic advisor.

It is quite clear that unlike Yashwant Sinha, Singh would like to put in place a stable team of senior officials to advise him. Sinha presented five budgets with five different secretaries at the helm.

After N K Singh's departure from the Prime Minister's Office, Sinha also stopped getting any meaningful input from the PMO on key economic policy making or on budget formulation.

But with different secretaries to steer the budget exercise in all the five budgets, Sinha failed to give a cohesive direction to his fiscal management.

Given his track record in the South Block, Singh must have already begun scouting for talent within or outside the government to fill in the key positions.

Just about a week ago, the government cleared the extension of Bimal Jalan's tenure as governor of the Reserve Bank of India by another two years. The appointment of Rakesh Mohan, former advisor to Sinha, as RBI deputy governor has also been cleared.

Jaswant Singh would have little to worry on monetary management and would prefer continuity and stability at the central bank.

But what would set Jaswant Singh apart from all his predecessors is the fact that he has the additional responsibility of overseeing the department of company affairs. No other finance minister in India had the additional responsibility of overseeing that department.

The department of company affairs has a long history of being attached to different ministries in different times. Originally, it was attached to the ministry of law and justice.

During the 1980s, it was brought under the control of the industry ministry. But status quo ante was restored by P V Narasimha Rao in the 1990s, when it was brought under the ministry of law and justice once again.

Now, the company affairs department has been brought under the administrative control of the finance minister for the first time.

True, this could eliminate many friction points that have arisen over the administration of company law and the jurisdiction of the Securities and Exchange Board of India.

But this has also brought all inquiries and probes conducted by the department of company affairs into alleged violation of company laws by corporates under the jurisdiction of a finance minister, who pursues such issues with passion and conviction.

This may not be a very good piece of news for many corporates in India, who thrived on the usual lethargy of the department of company affairs in the pursuit of such cases.

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