Montek Singh Ahluwalia
Little patience with the shoves and pulls of politics
One of the key players in the Budget making process is the secretary, department of economic affairs. Ths post is considered the first among the three secretarial posts in the finance ministry and the incumbent is usually called by the more familiar nomenclature of finance secretary.
Occupying that chair is Oxford-educated economist Montek Singh Ahluwalia -- a Rhodes scholar who first joined the government in 1979 as an economic adivser.
Ahluwalia, like Finance Minister P Chidambaram, represents the continuity motif; but at the bureaucratic level. When Dr Manmohan Singh held the reins in the finance ministry, Ahluwalia was his most trusted lieutenant and has tended to share credit with Singh as one of the chief architects of the economic reforms programme.
A stint with the World Bank before he joined the Government of India in the late seventies has made Ahluwalia anathema to political leaders with a socialist persuasion. Like the finance minister, he is known as an ardent advocate of liberalisation and has on occasion shown his impatience with the inability of the government to tackle well-entrenched electoral constituencies whose closeness to political powers has ensured the continuance of privileges that come in the way of pushing economic reforms forward.
An affable Sikh, whose penchant for sporting a pink turban has earned him the sobriquet ‘The Pink Sikh’, Ahluwalia has always been popular among bureaucrats. His equations with political leaders have not always been very smooth and his complete identification with the push towards globalisation and liberalisation could result in some discomfort in a government which depends on the Communists for its survival.
Ahluwalia has never enjoyed much popularity in Left circles; recent initiatives announced by the finance minister have already ruffled feathers amongst the Communists. Since much of policy-making in the government is heavily dependent on advice proffered by bureaucrats, a lack of political sensitivity could prove a major disadvantage.
The contradicatory pulls exerted by the various constituents of the motley crowd that has taken over at the Centre could test the patience of any bureaucrat. For Ahluwalia, the challenge is to ensure that economic policy remains on the reforms path even as he helps put in place a policy framework that contains the right amount of political rhetoric without sacrificing economic horse sense.
The Budget Makers
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