A Tough Legacy

FINALLY, does it all come down to individuals? After the number crunching, after the macroeconomic heartburn, after erudite debates and the cocktail circuit holding-forth?

The biggest problem Chidambaram faces may be that he succeeded Manmohan Singh. And the policies and decisions don’t matter. What aggravates the problem is that they are two men as different as possible. If Manmohan Singh was friendly and avuncular, quoting Urdu shairis in Budget speeches, Chidambaram is, by nature, a far more reserved person. So reserved that he is routinely accused of arrogance. Manmohan’s smiling visage carved its image in the hearts of millions of Indians; the most hardened industrialists were reduced to giving inane opinions: "We trust Dr Singh." Chidambaram does not smile so often (the picture on the right is a planned pre-Budget photo-opportunity, everyone smiles on such occasions).

He is courteous, but distant. He meets businessmen far less often than Singh, and the common complaint is that "he does not listen".

Chidambaram possibly met less businessmen than any finance minister before presenting his first Budget. Whatever the reason for this, the result was that when he stood up to present the Budget in Parliament, India Inc. already distrusted him. This is significant, because for five years, corporate India had adored Chidambaram; he was often mentioned in private as the man as responsible for the reforms as Manmohan. While corporate India stood by him when Chidambaram revealed that he owned some shares in scam-tainted Fairgrowth (shares that he had paid for by cheque) and was–unfairly–shunted out of the cabinet, it is also chary when he continues to take the moral high ground today. When he announces that there will be no immunity schemes at all, Indian industry remembers the pragmatic Manmohan who launched the India Development Bonds–bring in your funny money, no questions asked–and mobilised Rs 3,000 crore to get the economy out of a crippling debt crisis. Is there any way India can access the money required to get infrastructure in shape other than employ the huge reservoirs of black money, India Inc. asks. But Chidambaram is unlikely to unbend.

Just the same way that his unquestioned intellectual brilliance simply does not allow him to suffer fools. Or those he considers as fools. Industrialists rue that in a situation where he, hemmed in by the Left, hampered by the various regional parties, needs, more than anything else, to rely on negotiating skills, to fall back on his legendary charm, Chidambaram refuses to do that. Manmohan was not a career politician; Chidambaram, however thriving his law practice, is. To its reluctant surprise, India Inc.’s view is that Manmohan was a better manipulator, a better politician. And that’s influencing business confidence. Corporate India cheered when Chidambaram became finance minister. If only now he would turn kinder and gentler.