Dr Shankar Acharya

The priority setter

The finance minister's Budget speech usually is divided into two parts. The second deals with the new fiscal measures for the coming financial year. The first deals with the pattern of resource deployment and is an important indicator of the sectoral priorities that the government has set for itself.

In fashioning the policy stance implicit in government expenditures, the main role is assayed by the chief economic advisor to the government. That post is now occupied by Dr Shankar Acharya -- an Oxford and Harvard-educated economist.

Prior to joining the government in 1985 Dr Acharya had an 11-year stint with the World Bank and then spent three years at the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy Research -- an institute founded by Dr Raja Chellaiah who has been instrumental in pushing through the tax reforms introduced during Dr Manmohan Singh's tenure as the finance minister.

Extremely publicity-shy and with a cultivated image of being one of the backroom boys, Dr Acharya has been determining sectoral priorities for the past three years. The major problem he faces lies in his inability to fine-tune policies to ensure that no political feathers are ruffled, an issue that posed no problem when a single party held power in the federal government. With a coalition government, Acharya could find his lack of flexibility a problem -- not just for himself but for his finance minister too.

The Budget Makers