Remembering Arun Jaitley and the mark he left on the Indian economy

In informal conversations, current and past bureaucrats, some of whom are still in very powerful positions, have spoken highly of him as a minister who trusted his bureaucrats' judgement, experience

Arun Jaitley will be remembered as the finance minister during two of the biggest seismic events in India’s economic history — demonetisation and the goods and services tax (GST).

While helming affairs at North Block, he put in place a number of economic laws and measures. These include the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, the Black Money Act, amendments to the Benami Act, the Fugitive Economic Offenders Act, banking reforms through the ‘Indradhanush’ programme, mergers of a number of state-owned banks, and a record number of divestment proceeds. For policy watchers, however, his biggest achievement was perhaps fiscal rectitude, something on