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ONE remembers the brave face the Finance Minister, Mr Yashwant Sinha, put on after presenting his Union Budget for 2002-2003 when he said that, this time around, there would be no "rollback" of any major proposal and that he was fed up with the "rollback" epithet that had come to be associated with his name.

At the time, though not without some scepticism, one had welcomed the Minister's resolve, even hoping that Mr Sinha would be able to stick to it, in the process riding roughshod over the populist elements in the NDA Government which have effectively put the nation up for sale, in a manner of speaking. But, of course, there is no limit to the fondest hopes which have hardly any connection with the real world, with the result that six weeks after the presentation of the Budget things have come to such a pass vis-à-vis the "rollback" aspect that Mr Sinha has even found it necessary to speak to the media about his problems on this front.

In a recent report carried by a Delhi daily, the Finance Minister said there could be many reasons for the criticism directed at him. Among other things, "some people don't like my face, others don't like the fact that I am FM, still others would like to see me out of this job, while others may feel that I don't belong to a charmed circle". On a more positive level, he is quoted as having said: "I don't mind criticism, nobody minds it. It is very much a part of life in a democratic society. But it should be constructive and not a single-minded pursuit of destroying a person. When it degenerates into rubbishing, it is not decent or funny anymore".

This is sensible stuff, and one can see quite clearly that Mr Sinha is upset by the scale and content of the flak that is being directed at him. But the next bit gives the Minister away, suggesting in very clear terms that something that "is very much a part of life in a democratic society" is not palatable to the Minister if he happens to be at the receiving end.

This is with reference to Mr Sinha's view that "Even a small step is regarded as a rollback because the media feeds it". Now, the important question is: why does the media feel the need to "feed" such a view? Slightly more important is the fact that since the "rollback" charge is rather serious, there is obviously a unanimity in the media about the charge.

Given the fact that there are various interests — both political and economic — at work in the nation's media, giving it a basically splintered and fractured character, the fact that there is a measure of unanimity as regards the "rollback" charge suggests rather strongly that the various aspects of the "rollback" in question do not constitute "a small step", as Mr Sinha would have it.

At a more general level, he says: "No Finance Minister is a free agent and he never has a clean slate to write on". More specifically, "You have to understand that in our kind of politics, economics is secondary and short-term considerations overtake everything else". Mr Sinha is absolutely correct. In fact, one does not have to be Finance Minister, or any Minister for that matter, to understand how basic this is to a proper understanding of the broad subject of governing India.

Come to think of it, Mr Sinha ought to have said that, in Indian conditions, no good Finance Minister can afford not to have the tag of "rollback". One is sure that Mr Sinha would like the nation (and the media) to consider him, even if impliedly, to be a good Finance Minister!

Ranabir Ray Choudhury

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