New Delhi: Soon after she assumed the charge of the finance ministry, Nirmala Sitharaman’s attitude towards the finance secretary, Subhash Chandra Garg, was frosty, the IAS officer of 1983 batch Rajasthan cadre has written in his new book, ‘No, Minister: Navigating Power, Politics and Bureaucracy with a Steely Resolve’.
The reason for her angst? She thought that Garg went about “bitching” about her and treating her like a bachchi (child).
This resulted in a “broken functional relationship” between the two, and Garg’s eventual resignation as finance secretary, he has written in this richly detailed account of the rough and tumble of administrative life, including the many run-ins he had with politicians throughout his career.
In the book, he also describes former Rajasthan chief minister Vasundhara Raje as an “official split personality,” who felt “cheated” when he was called by the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) in 2014, soon after Modi became PM.
A strange accusation—‘bitching’ about the finance minister
On their official visit to Japan in June 2019, Garg complimented Sitharaman for speaking effectively at the G-20 finance ministers’ meeting. Her reaction surprised him. “I hope I did not disappoint you,” she retorted.
“My suspicion that she was carrying biases against me were confirmed but I chose to ignore it,” Garg writes.
The second instance came soon after. In June, 2019, Garg sought to conclude a pre-budget meeting with stakeholders by thanking them for their participation, and telling them their inputs will be put up in front of the minister for her consideration.
“I will abide by what the finance secretary says, especially a finance secretary who is much older than me in the finance ministry, and not discuss the suggestions,” Garg recalls her as saying. She did not close the meeting thereafter, and the stakeholders continued to make their interventions. Even as they were talking, Sitharaman turned to Garg, and said, “What do you think, I cannot violate you? I would.”
When Garg went to her room to clear the air after the meeting, she was “livid” and “relentless”, he writes. “She said I treated her like a bachchi (child). At one stage, she said that I had gone to various people and ‘bitched’ about her, which was false. She also threatened to bring the entire matter to the notice of the prime minister.”
“I don’t know what had got into her. It was clear, though, that there was a serious problem and that our functional relationship had broken down,” Garg says.
In the run-up to the Budget, things became worse. While the finance minister and secretary are supposed to work in tandem on the budget speech, which is closely vetted by the prime minister, the finance minister refused to share the draft of the speech with Garg before the meeting with the PM, he said.
“This created an unprecedented situation. I was responsible for finalising the speech and seeing it through to print without any glitches. Further, I was also primarily responsible for presenting and defending the speech in the PMO,” he writes. “Still, I did not have a draft of it which my finance minister had finalised.”
The “last straw” for Garg was, however, the non-banking financial company (NBFC) package, which the PMO wanted to announce. The secretary of the Department of Financial Services (DFS), Rajiv Kumar, who recently retired as the chief election commissioner, proposed amendments in the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Act, including conferring regulatory and resolution jurisdiction to RBI. Garg opposed this.
While Sitharaman sided with Garg on this issue, he ended up irking Nripendra Misra, former principal secretary to the PM. The PMO decided to go ahead with the initial proposal made by Kumar.
Garg signed the file with a fresh note saying that the proposal of the DFS is to be accepted. Sitharaman—who he says, “found it difficult to clear any file on which differing views were recorded” —wanted Garg’s earlier oppositions to be removed.
“She would not sign the file with the earlier notes still in it. Her office conveyed this clearly to Rajiv. Rajiv told me the note sheets recorded earlier would have to be taken out, destroyed and replaced with new note sheets with the same dates and numbers,” he writes. “Though I had never allowed such a thing in my life, I acquiesced only to ensure that the budget process could go through.”
“But I decided that I would not be party to something like this ever again. It was the moment I made up my mind to quit the IAS,” he writes.
‘Official split personality’
This was not the first time Garg had irked a politician.
In 2014, Garg was called by P.K. Mishra, then Additional Principal Secretary to the newly appointed Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and was asked to join as India’s Executive Director at the World Bank.
His acceptance irrevocably antagonised his then chief minister, Vasundhara Raje, with whom he had worked for several years. Raje had an “official split personality”—extraordinarily efficient and transparent on one hand, but “different” on matters concerning revenue-earning departments like excise, land allotment, etc., he says. Yet, he enjoyed a close working relationship with her for years.
When Raje learnt of his appointment, “all hell broke loose” in Rajasthan, he writes. “She was infuriated and felt cheated,” he writes. “She summoned Rajiv Mehrishi (then the chief secretary of Rajasthan) and declared, ‘Subhash is not going anywhere.’”
She asked Mehrishi to write to the PMO that Garg will not be relieved, but the chief secretary advised her against it, given that “the relationship between the two was also not very cordial”.
Later, Garg was unceremoniously excluded from a cabinet meeting for which he went, and his relieving orders were suddenly handed to him. He was asked to immediately proceed on central deputation without even a courtesy visit to Raje, which he requested twice.
“I made one more request to see her before I departed Jaipur lock, stock and barrel on 24 September,” he writes. “Her secretary did not revert. I decided that was the end of the matter. I never reached out to her thereafter. We have neither met nor spoken to each other since September 2014.”
The recalcitrant minister
Unlike Sitharaman and Raje, Garg did not work directly with the “recalcitrant minister” Jayanthi Natrajan, who was the environment minister in the “policy paralysis” era of the UPA II.
In 2013, when Garg was appointed in the cabinet secretariat, first as a joint secretary and then an additional secretary, there was an “evident rot” in the environment ministry, he writes. Not only was it procedurally difficult to get clearances, Natarajan “sat on files for months”, he writes.
“The environment secretary’s helplessness was apparent—there were over 400 files reportedly pending, waiting for the minister’s approval and signature,” he says. Even the constitution of the cabinet committee on investments did not succeed in getting the “recalcitrant minister” to act.
He relates one particular incident, “a bizarre spectacle”, where Natrajan kept former prime minister Manmohan Singh waiting for 40 minutes at a meeting of the cabinet committee on investments.
When she finally showed up, she just said she would take more time to examine the projects without any explanation for the delay, Garg writes. “The meeting ended with the prime minister advising the minister to try to clear the projects at the earliest,” he says. “No one needed better evidence to conclude how weak and ineffectual Manmohan Singh had become in his own cabinet.”
In the over-400-page book, Garg also writes of the difficult relationship he shared with Andhra Pradesh chief minister Chandrababu Naidu and former principal secretary to the PM, Misra.
Naidu, who like present times was a key coalition partner of the NDA government in the early 2000s, sought to direct disproportionate amount of central funds to Andhra Pradesh, Garg writes. When as director in the Department of Economic Affairs (DEA), Garg sought to check this, Babu started “baying for his blood”, he says.
As for Misra, on one occasion, Garg says he told him, “Don’t ever go to the PM over my head.” On another, he explicitly said, “The prime minister is unhappy with you. The finance minister is unhappy with you. Subhash, you are not in tune with the thinking of the government.”
(Edited by Zinnia Ray Chaudhuri)
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