John Samuel Raja D: Point man in finance

With the United Progressive Alliance coming back to power in a fairly dramatic manner, and without the Left parties to hobble them like they did the last time around, most expect the government to come up with a fairly sizeable reforms package. This includes, for instance, deepening financial sector reforms, increasing the levels of foreign equity in the insurance sector, passing the Pension Fund Regulatory Development Authority (PFRDA) Bill, disinvestment (though not privatisation), and even coming up with new guidelines on foreign investment (press notes 2, 3 and 4 issued by the industry ministry have been opposed by the finance ministry).

The man who is charge of piloting most of these legislation is Ashok Chawla, a man whose re-entry into the finance ministry (he worked as director in the finance ministry a decade ago) almost coincided (there was a two-day difference) with the collapse of Lehman Brothers. Chawla, who was brought in as economic affairs secretary, is now the ministry’s top bureaucrat, or the finance secretary. His topmost priority, of course, will be to present the full Budget for the year, to ensure that while there is a fiscal stimulus, enough measures are taken to keep the fiscal deficit in check.

Most of Chawla’s colleagues say he will do a good job. A post-graduate in economics, he has worked in the finance ministry and has also been the economic counsellor in the embassy in Washington. The 1973-batch Gujarat cadre IAS officer has also headed the Sardar Sarovar Narmada Nigam Ltd — so he is quite comfortable steering large projects which involve controversial issues like resettlement and land reclamation. Chawla also headed the Gujarat Industrial Investment Corporation and was the head of IPCL when it was sold off to Reliance Industries. Chawla, his colleagues say, is a consensus-builder and is able to maintain good relationships across the board — and is not embarrassed to seek advice from junior colleagues on various issues.

The same ability to build consensus, however, is also tempered with unwillingness to take on a tough minister. Chawla will, colleagues say, point out the pitfalls involved in a certain course of action, but if the minister is adamant, Chawla will allow the proposal to go through — in other words, he is the quintessential bureaucrat.

At the aviation ministry, where Chawla was secretary before he joined finance, the big controversy centered around allowing the GMR-group-controlled DIAL to take six-year deposits from those taking land from it on a long-lease and not sharing this with the government. While ministry bureaucrats explained the pros and cons of the move, and DIAL was even asked to put its plans on ice, civil aviation minister Praful Patel was adamant DIAL be allowed to go ahead. Chawla finally relented, though the papers on the subject were not cleared by him personally. Purists will quibble with the approach, but the way Chawla sees it, since it is the ministers who are finally responsible to Parliament and to the people, their will has to prevail.