Meet Bimal Jalan, the go-to advisor across the political spectrum

One of the reasons Jalan can afford to be forthright is that he has seen it all in his 78 years

In 2007, Bimal Jalan had written a commentary of what he saw in Parliament. It was a period of bitter divisions in both Houses and the former Reserve Bank governor bluntly expressed his shock as the Rajya Sabha, in the midst of utter pandemonium, pass in a jiffy hundreds of “papers including annual reports of public sector organisations, outcome and performance budgets, action-taken reports, and notifications issued by various departments by a dozen ministers”. 

These comments on this dereliction of parliamentary duty were captured in his book Indian Politics: A View from the Backbench published in 2007. He has gone