Ashok Lavasa wears many hats: Author, teacher, and now at poll panel

New election commissioner Ashok Lavasa wears many hats —author, erstwhile teacher, bureaucrat, nature lover. What he loves the most is photography. Wherever he has taken office, he has adorned it with photographs clicked by him. He says his camera is one thing he has never forgotten to pack when on foreign tour. Go to his Twitter account and you will find some of the pictures clicked by him.

 

Lavasa, who retired from the Indian Administrative Service in October, is now also a quiz question. He is the answer to the query: Who was India’s finance secretary when the government implemented demonetisation and goods and service tax?

 

A 1980 batch Haryana cadre officer, Lavasa was indeed one of only 10 people at the top of the central government who were aware of the plans and contours of demonetisation before it was announced. As the secretary in charge of expenditure, he had the biggest role, among bureaucrats, in shaping the 2017-18 Budget, when Finance Minister Arun Jaitley bit the proverbial bullet and went for a fiscal deficit target of 3.2 per cent of gross domestic product, instead of an advised three per cent.

 

This was the first Budget which to be presented on February 1 and, hence, allowed passage of the Finance Bill before the start of a new financial year. Hence, expenditure was massively frontloaded and at the start of the 2017-18 financial year, disbursements for some projects were as high as 400 per cent year-on-year.

 

Lavasa was directly responsible for allocations to various ministries and schemes, joking that he was one of the most disliked men in bureaucracy. Indeed, when ministries see their allocations getting cut or sums not being disbursed, they blame the ‘all-powerful’ expenditure department. The buzz was that Lavasa always handled meetings with counterparts using charm and grace. Traits which will hold him in good stead as he helps to ensure the coming state elections, and the big one, the 2019 general election, go off relatively smoothly.

 

A fiscal conservative, Lavasa also believes departments should be able to monetise their resources through capital markets as much as possible, instead of depending completely on finance ministry allocations. He also oversaw the switch from an output-based budget to an outcome-based one. This essentially helped in improving the quality of expenditure and made spending a better targeted exercise.

 

Lavasa has also headed a panel was tasked with examining the 7th pay commission’s recommendations on allowances for the central government’s 4.7 million employees.

 

Before North Block, he was environment secretary. He was a crucial part of the team which went to Paris to negotiate the historical COP21 agreement. Environment protection and sustainable development are topics close to his heart. He also featured in actor Leonardo DiCaprio’s documentary on global warming, Before the Flood.

 

He has that rare ability, to engage journalists in long conversations without revealing news. He has come across as patient, by-the-book, upright and warm individual. Even when stories on him have gone wrong, he has laughed these off. This correspondent once wrote that Lavasa could be made the next defence secretary. That did not come to pass, and he always recalls that story, in mirth.