Sinha’s magic: Walking into every disaster possible

Former finance minister Yashwant Sinha’s biggest tragedy, it can be said in retrospect, was that he was really unlucky. Pokharan, Kargil, September 11, the US travel advisories — you name the economic disaster, and Sinha was there, bang in the middle of it. To that extent, the fact that under his stewardship, the economy remains in deep trouble, certainly has something to do with this. Naturally, on his departure, there’s no one to cry for him. (Everyone loves a winner, and that’s why they loved Jagjivan Ram — as defence minister, he won a war, and as agriculture minister, he always got good monsoons.)

But this apart, what was Sinha’s record? Mixed. Brilliant in parts, but this was blotched by major failures in delivery. That’s got to do with the fact that the NDA is a big coalition with conflicting pulls and pressures, Sinha’s camp argues in defence. True, but till Arun Shourie showed how, did anyone think big-ticket disinvestment was even a possibility — even he faced the same pressures from within the NDA. Two budgets ago, by contrast, Sinha galvanised the stock markets by promising major labour reforms, but till date these have not been concretised. Sinha, of course, has had major reforms to his credit. He successfully piloted the insurance bill, and the housing sector got a big boost with the repeal of the urban land ceiling act and a host of other incentives, and Sinha’s dogged refusal to accommodate petroleum minister Ram Naik played a major role in the oil sector being freed up on schedule. And it was Sinha’s decision to levy a cess on diesel and petrol sales that created the fund to set off India’s biggest-ever national highways development programme.