FMs who navigated reform

Titled India's Finance Ministers: Different Strokes (1998-2014), this volume does exactly what the previous two in the same series did, but over some of the most interesting years of modern Indian economic history.

- LAVEESH BHANDARI

The style remains the same: Non-judgemental and clinical, yet not critical. Perhaps there would be another where the author does not shy away from judgement or critique, but for now, he is simply a raconteur and not an analyst.

The period 1998 to 2014 is unarguably critical; the reforms of the early 1990s were yielding significant benefits; India was on a substantially higher growth path, government revenues were increasing, and successes in telecom, road building, and education, to name a few, were unfolding. Yet, employment growth was a serious concern. Unlike in the past, only four finance ministers held the position during this period—Yashwant Sinha, Jaswant Singh, Pranab Mukherjee and P Chidambaram.

Curiously, a significant part of the volume is devoted to Yashwant Sinha and is spread over two large-ish chapters, the first covering 1998 to 1999, and the second, 1999 to 2002. There are some interesting anecdotes there, but I fail to understand the need to devote so much to those years. I would have tightened that part and included the period 2014 to 2024, with Narendra Modi as Prime Minister and first Arun Jaitley, and later Nirmala Sitharaman, as finance minister. What a sparkler of a volume that would have been! Perhaps there is a Volume 4 on the anvil.