AK Bhattacharya, whom I have known for over 40 years as a colleague—and friend with whom I share a very special bond created by the stinky and crowded DTC buses in the 1980s—has written a very useful book by using the Finance Minister as a device to write what is actually an economic history. The book looks at major events through the eyes of the main protagonists, namely, the Finance Minister and the Prime Minister.
It takes monumental effort to write about India’s Finance Ministers. There have been so many. For one thing, the job they do is probably even more difficult than that of the Prime Minister because while the latter can afford to annoy his or her colleagues, a Finance Minister must tread carefully and lightly. And, for another, it’s most unusual for a Finance Minister to last longer than two or three years in that office. As jobs go, only a traffic policeman has a worse one. Necessary and thankless.