Beating the numbers

In Gandhinagar, the tradition was that the chief minister stayed at bungalow No 1 and his number two in the Cabinet was in No 26, the house adjacent to the chief minister’s residence. The superstitious in Gujarat began to notice a pattern in that the chief minister invariably lost his job to his deputy, who also happened to live next door. Chimanbhai Patel was succeeded by his deputy Chhabildas Mehta who lived in No 26. Keshubhai Patel in his first stint as chief minister was ousted by Shankersinh Vaghela who was his immediate neighbour. Vaghela, in turn, was unseated by his deputy Dilip Parikh who lived next door.

In his second tenure as chief minister Keshubhai Patel tried to ward off the jinx by not allowing his number two Suresh Mehta to stay at bungalow No 26. Patel appropriated both bungalow No 1 and No 26 for himself. He was dethroned nevertheless by Narendra Mody; though Mody at least was not his neighbour. Now, Mody has devised his own strategy of beating the numbers jinx. He has moved from bungalow No 1 to No 37. That way he has No 26 dogging his footsteps and at the same time his new house number adds up to one.

Foolish plan

The irrelevance of the Planning Commission can be judged from the fact that it is still holding discussions with the various state governments on their 2001-2002 budgets, although the state assemblies had passed their respective budgets for the current financial year several months ago. Nevertheless, the state governments continue with the elaborate exercise by which the chief secretary of the state and his entire team of senior officials fly down the Capital for discussions with the Planning Commission. At a second visit to Delhi, the chief minister accompanies the jumbo team. How exactly the Planning Commission can provide valid inputs for framing a budget, long after it has been drawn up is a tantalising question.

Till three years back, the Planning Commission’s conferences with state governments on the forthcoming budget were completed by November of the previous year. But the schedule went totally awry thanks to the Planning Commission’s initiative. The commission felt the states were inflating figures of their revenue collection to extract higher central government assistance, so some smart alec suggested it made more sense to schedule the meetings later so that the commission had a more realistic idea of the state’s actual revenues. It seems a bit like throwing the baby out with the bath water!

Only permanent fixture

The new appointments in the Finance Ministry are hanging fire for quite a while because Finance Secretary Ajit Kumar and Revenue Secretary S Narain who are slated to be shunted out are holding out for post-retirement sinecures as compensation. The posts of chief of the Central Electricity Regulatory Authority and the head of SEBI are the two substitute positions being mentioned in this context. If Revenue Secretary C M Vasudev takes over as finance secretary, he will be the fourth financial secretary in Yashwant Sinha’s three-and-half year tenure as finance minister. There have been six reshuffles of senior bureaucrats since Sinha took charge of the ministry, for he seems to have a low threshold level of tolerance for his officials.

While secretaries may come and go in the ministry a near permanent fixture is T Rastogi, the joint secretary (budget) who heads the tariff research unit. Rastogi has been preparing budgets for the last nine years since Manmohan Singh was finance minister and all his superiors are agreed that his services are indispensable in balancing a budget. The IRS cadre officer has figures like the total production and capacity of various industries, taxable items and non-taxable items on his fingertips. He can calculate within minutes how much the reduction or increase in a particular tariff will impact on the budget.

Delayed reaction

Within three days of the heavy exchange of fire between India and Pakistan at the Akhnoor and Mendhar on the LoC, the Pakistanis had taken a press party of foreign journalists to the PoK border to substantiate its claim that India was the aggressor. A week after the incident, the Indian government had yet to make the arrangements for the international media to visit our side of the border, although there is evidence of large numbers of artillery shells with the POF (Pakistan Ordinance Factory) marking at the spot which testify to our version that Pakistan had indeed stepped up the firing. The Ministry of External Affairs reacted late to the propaganda value of the trip and it took a while to get the Defence Minister George Fernandes’s sanction for a defence aircraft, since he was away in Siachen and Srinagar.

Rail roaded

At a recent meeting of the cabinet committee on economic affairs an officer complained about the lack of proper documentation submitted by various ministries to the CCEA and cited the example of a railway project report before the committee which did not even provide the economic rate of return. Cabinet Secretary T S R Prasad quipped ‘‘You should know, there is a right way and a wrong way and a rail way!’’

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