by Harihar Swarup

Overcoming pulls and pressures
RARELY has a Finance Minister begun his tenure amidst so many controversies as Yashwant Sinha and yet he has settled down so comfortably in his sprawling office in North Block. It took him almost a year to stabilise and the presentation of a non-controversial Budget last week was the high watermark in his variegated political career.

75 Years Ago

Imperial Bank fraud
MADRAS: In connection with the Imperial Bank fraud, one Mohammed Rukm-ud-Din, ex-clerk of Ahmed Batcha and Co., whose account book was seized yesterday, was arrested and produced before the Commissioner of Police.

The significance of Jaya’s Delhi visit
JAYALALITHA who was planning to come to Delhi on March 9, may defer her tour plan. The Opposition leaders had been attaching great significance to her Delhi visit in view of her pressure on Vajpayee to drop Ramamurthy from the Cabinet. The Prime Minister had told her that he would discuss the matter on her next Delhi visit. There are many more issues. Sources say she had set March 5 as the deadline for Ramamurthy’s removal. For how long will she tolerate Ramamurthy in the Cabinet?

by Harihar Swarup
Overcoming pulls and pressures

RARELY has a Finance Minister begun his tenure amidst so many controversies as Yashwant Sinha and yet he has settled down so comfortably in his sprawling office in North Block. It took him almost a year to stabilise and the presentation of a non-controversial Budget last week was the high watermark in his variegated political career. The Budget presented by his predecessor, P. Chidambaram, might have been described as “a dream budget” but the circumstances and pulls and pressures under which Sinha formulated a tight-rope estimated allocation and expenditures from the consolidated fund of India is no mean achievement.

Remember precisely this time last year. Jaswant Singh was all set to takeover the rein of the Finance Ministry and Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee was also keen that his confidant should step into North Block. Jaswant’s defeat in the elections was the biggest stumbling block and, added to that, pressure from the RSS deprived the articulate leader from Rajasthan the second most important position (second only to PM) in the Cabinet. The RSS lobby had a point; inducting a defeated candidate as Finance Minister would send wrong message.

The name of another senior BJP leader, Murli Manohar Joshi, came to the fore but his views on the question of liberalisation were too rigid and he nurtured unrealistic “swadeshi” phobia. In sharp contrast, Jaswant Singh, was a staunchly pro-liberalisation leader. What the Finance Ministry needed was a believer in the middle of the road policy who could keep up the pace of liberalisation and, at the same time, keep the Swadeshi lobby of the BJP happy. The Prime Minister preferred Yashwant Sinha who was, perhaps, ideally suited for the key portfolio even though he had not risen from the BJP cadre nor had he the RSS background.

Many eyebrows were raised at that time and the hard core in the ruling party’s setup were, apparently, not happy. Yashwantji was only one of the spokesman of the BJP when the mid-term poll was declared and he was drafted, like many, to contest from his home state Bihar. He had not gone through the mill of the BJP, argued the hardcore lobby.

Yashwant Sinha was by far the best spokesman of the BJP because, unlike Venkaiah Naidu and K.L. Sharma, he did not believe in twisting facts and trying to defend the indefensible. His precept of dealing with the press was and, he was often heard as saying: “You should tell the truth or hang on by the very verge of truth”. That was, perhaps, the reason that he enjoyed more credibility with Delhi’s large press corps than his colleagues and his counterparts in other parties. Sinha carried this down to earth and pragmatic approach in dealing with the members of the Fourth Estate when he moved to the Finance Ministry.

Unlike other BJP ministers, Sinha comes altogether from a different background. He neither belongs to the RSS cadre nor has he a very long association with the BJP. He joined the party towards the fag end of 1993 and before taking the step, he resigned his membership of the Rajya Sabha.

Jaswantji, as his colleagues address him in the BJP, is also a late-comer in politics having given up his 24-year long career as a bureaucrat. He joined the erstwhile Janata Party as late as 1988 and was elected to the Rajya Sabha. When the Janata Party merged with the Janata Dal, he became JD’s general secretary. Come 1989 elections, V.P. Singh became the Prime Minister and he offered Sinha a ministerial berth with the status of minister of state but the latter declined. Two years of waiting and Sinha’s chance came again. The Janata Dal split and Chandra Shekhar became the Prime Minister with outside support of the Congress. The “young Turk” of yesteryears held the Bihar leader in high esteem and inducted him in his Cabinet as Finance Minister. The minority government lasted barely seven months.

Jayaprakash Narayan has left an abiding impact on the 62-year-old Finance Minister. In fact, Sinha wanted to bid goodbye to the IAS much earlier but the Sarvodaya leader dissuaded him from taking such a course of action. Sinha first came in contact with JP when he was working as district magistrate in Santhal Pargana in Bihar. He was transferred following a tiff with then Chief Minister, Mahamaya Prasad. Sinha decided to meet JP and it was after that the Sarvodaya leader issued a statement that ministers should stop misbehaving with officers.

Sinha was the focus of the nation’s attention as he presented the Budget for 1999-2000. Like his predecessors, he will continue to hog the headlines till Parliament puts its seal of approval on the last Budget of the present century. The Finance Minister will have to face formidable challenges in the new fiscal year with an “unacceptably high” deficit of Rs 89,713 crore.

Delhi grapevine
The significance of Jaya’s Delhi visit

JAYALALITHA who was planning to come to Delhi on March 9, may defer her tour plan. The Opposition leaders had been attaching great significance to her Delhi visit in view of her pressure on Vajpayee to drop Ramamurthy from the Cabinet. The Prime Minister had told her that he would discuss the matter on her next Delhi visit. There are many more issues. Sources say she had set March 5 as the deadline for Ramamurthy’s removal. For how long will she tolerate Ramamurthy in the Cabinet? Opposition leaders say it could be at the most upto April. But, it must not be construed from this that the leaders of the Third Front are talking to her. Jayalalitha and Sonia Gandhi are in direct contact with each other. Her visit to Delhi would have created a commotion in government circles. But both sides are keeping their fingers crossed as to what would be the impact of the postponement of her visit to Delhi.

***

The President is upset once again. And Bihar is in the eye of the storm. He is said to have confided in his confidants that he was apprehending this scenario. But his hands were tied. The government had this time sent its earlier recommendation for reconsideration. Though K.R. Narayanan could have sat over it, he did not want to be seen as a President out to embarrass the government every time. He, therefore, signed the proclamation invoking Article 356 in Bihar. The sources assert that this time too he had expressed his reservations in writing. He had sought certain clarifications while he was in Calcutta, where he signed it. He is believed to be credited with the opinion that the ground on which Article 356 had been invoked in case of Bihar was more pressing for its invocation in some other states, notably Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh. Yet, if he signed it, it was because he wanted to avoid a conflict with the government.

***

These days the RSS is happy with the Vajpayee government. Instead of condemning Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee as a “petty politician”, the Sangh leaders are now busy eulogising him as the only statesman who can give leadership to the entire Third World in its fight against economic imperialism. However, the latest reason for truce with its estranged pracharak is his agreeing to adopt the Sangh philosophy of decentralisation in the Budget for 1999-2000. While the swadeshi protagonists had been impressing upon the government to give the Budget a swadeshi thrust, they certainly had a reason to rejoice. And they are so happy with the Budget that instead of the BJP, they have taken up the cudgels for improving the image of the government. The Sangh leadership is now going all out to praise the government for “not succumbing” to the pressures of any industrial lobby. And no one can claim that it is Tata’s budget or Ambani’s budget or even Hinduja’s Budget. But how long this truce sustains is anybody’s guess.

***

The truce was called even before the Budget was presented. And it was not silent, but pronounced. The Sangh leadership had not only toned down its attack on the government, but a hardliner like Dattopant Thengdi had publicly lauded Prime Minister Vajpayee as the strongest PM after Lal Bahadur Shastri. It was only three days before the Budget was presented. However, they say a realisation has dawned on the Sangh, that its rhetorics against its own government were paving the way for Sonia Gandhi. The Sangh leadership agreed on one point that the Vajpayee government was in any case better than a government led by Sonia Gandhi or supported by it.

It was in fact the realisation of “sense of proportion” that led the Sangh leaders to call a unilateral truce. It was left to Vajpayee to respond to this gesture. The Sangh’s main worry was about the options before it. What after the Vajpayee government? This was the question that haunted it. And even though the government was seen compromising on various issues like Hindutva and swadeshi, the “simpleton leadership” of the Sangh got swayed by Vajpayee’s emotional appeals to it not to doubt his intentions.

***

Mr Vajpayee also seems to be reciprocating the gesture. The first was reflected in his Finance Minister’s Budget. The second was in the form of elevation of Uma Bharati. And the third is the government’s climbdown on foreign equity in the insurance sector. They say the decision to break the impasse in the case of Uma Bharati was prompted by her reported threat to boycott the Khajurao Millennium Festival. Peeved at her being ignored by her senior minister, Dr M.M. Joshi, she had not been attending the office since October last. And while the Khajurao Festival is being organised in his constituency, she is reported to have told the Prime Minister that she would not like to attend the festival in the present circumstances. The Prime Minister was panicky since President K.R. Narayanan was billed to inaugurate the same. And while Dr Joshi was divested of three portfolios, state minister Uma Bharati was given independent charge of three important departments in the Ministry of HRD.

***

The Cabinet Secretary is at it again. When it comes to helping his Kayastha fraternity, he can go to any extent. It is really heyday for the Kayastha officers in the government. And if the officer is from his native UP cadre, the rules can be bent even backwards. Recently, the Establishment Officer noted on a file that Rakesh Bahadur, a 1978 batch UP cadre IAS, at present Deputy Director General in Doordarshan, could not be considered for empanelment as joint secretary. His objection was that Rakesh Bahadur’s dossier did not have four consecutive years’ confidential reports. Therefore, his case cannot be considered. This is a normal practice in the government. Only two months back, in a similar case, the Cabinet Secretary had agreed on the same. But this time, the Cabinet Secretary overruled him, saying it was not the officer’s fault. And he should not suffer for the folly of others. Rakesh Bahadur has been empanelled as a joint secretary in the government.

***

But another Deputy Director General (recently thrown out from Doordarshan) Harish Awasthi is not so lucky. Poor man is in search of a posting. He was thrown out unceremoniously from there soon after Pramod Mahajan took over the reins of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. Though he was transferred to the Press Information Bureau, he is still in search of a posting there.

As if to add insult to injury, he was told by the PIO N.J. Krishna that since he is from TV, let him watch TC. And indeed, a new television set has been installed in his room in Shastri Bhawan where he sits and watches television all the day. — Hari Shankar Vyas

75 YEARS AGO
Imperial Bank fraud

MADRAS: In connection with the Imperial Bank fraud, one Mohammed Rukm-ud-Din, ex-clerk of Ahmed Batcha and Co., whose account book was seized yesterday, was arrested and produced before the Commissioner of Police.

He was directed to be released on bail on his executing a bond for Rs 20,000 and furnishing two sureties for ten thousand each.

It is understood that Mr Ramchandriah, a Ledger-keeper in the Imperial Bank, has turned approver in the case on condition of his being granted a free pardon.