FMs' reward

The canny Lalu Prasad highlighted a link between Budgets, finance ministers and higher ambitions but only when they were linked to the Congress. During a debate on the Union Budget 2013-14, the former railway minister observed that he had personally known five finance ministers, right from Manmohan Singh to P Chidambaram, and all of them had been rewarded differently for doing good for the nation. Singh became prime minister, Pranab Mukherjee became President of India, and there are rumours that current Finance Minister Chidambaram was in the race for the prime ministership in 2014. But the same cannot be said for two other finance ministers whom he (Lalu) has known over the years. Bharatiya Janata Party leader Jaswant Singh was expelled from the party for a short while and Yashwant Sinha is out in the cold these days, though they, too, did good for the nation.