Piyush Goyal : The New Superman Of The Modi Cabinet Today

Arun Jaitley, though minister without portfolio, feels that he is still the Finance Minister and continues to behave like one. His latest gem is that the recent reduction in taxes on some products under the GST is a major economic reform as was, may I add, fixing them at high rates, to begin with. 

Piyush Goyal, who has been given temporary charge of the Finance Ministry, continues to worship the 'Paduka' (footwear) of Jaitley and refuses to function like a full-fledged Finance Minister. In any case, he has too much on his plate already.

The cavalier treatment meted out to the ministry by the Prime Minister from the very beginning is most baffling; so is the manner in which he has treated the allocation of portfolios to his ministers from the start of his government.

The first distribution of portfolios among the ministers of the council was announced by a cabinet secretariat notification on May 27, 2014. Some of the allocations defied logic.

 First, Arun Jaitley was given charge not only of the Ministry of Finance but also of the Ministry of Corporate Affairs and surprisingly, also,  the Defence Ministry. Apart from the fact that the Finance Ministry job is more than full-time, the Minister of Finance also sits in judgment over the expenditure proposals of other ministries. A situation was thus created where Arun Jaitley would approve expenditure proposals as Minister of Defence and sit in judgment on them as Minister of Finance. 

This is the way the Finance Minister should not be given charge of any other ministry. The Defence Ministry could have been easily allotted to any other senior minister like Home Minister Rajnath Singh or External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj. Was it lack of confidence in these senior-most ministers that was responsible for this strange arrangement?

The outburst of veteran BJP leader Yashwant Sinha (84) – that the government, particularly Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, has made a “mess” of the Indian economy – goes beyond internal party politics and personal squabble between the two leaders.

One of the fiercest attacks on the government, it has come not from an Opposition leader but from a former finance minister who had served in the Vajpayee government. Sinha may have his good reasons for being annoyed with the Modi government but he has nonetheless given a much-needed wake-up call to the ruling regime.

But the BJP government is unfazed and prefers to remain in a state of denial; both Home Minister Rajnath Singh and Railways Minister Piyush Goel came up with a tame defense, asserting that the entire world acknowledges that India has become the world’s fastest economy in three years.