?Having been a finance minister earlier, I knew exactly how to go about it. If I wanted a cat, I used to ask for a fat cat. I would then get a cat!? This is vintage Pranab Mukherjee. His standard answer to queries on how he managed to get high allocations for defence and other ministries that he headed.

Mukherjee is once again back in the North Block as finance minister of the new UPA government. The country?s economy has changed drastically since the time he headed it 27 years ago between 1982 and 1984. But the senior Congress leader is certainly no stranger to the subject that many find complex.

On Saturday, hours after his candidature was announced, Mukherjee?s first comments as the new finance minister was to assert that the government?s topmost priority was to continue policies aimed at protecting the country from the global economic downturn. Of course, Mukherjee refused to say more, maintaining that he will make his views known only on Monday after he joined office.

Those who know him would know that this refusal to talk is not because he needs a briefing from the ministry officials. After all, Mukherjee has been holding charge of finance for the last three months. In fact, he had attended meetings with finance ministry officials in North Block as late as last Wednesday. Just before the elections, he had also presented the interim Budget on behalf of the outgoing government.

The refusal to talk, therefore, underlines the principled stand of an old guard politician who will decline to go by anything else but the book. The gentleman that he is, Pranab Mukherjee has remained steadfastly tied to his principles even in a modern world. ?When it needs to be told, the media will be told,? is another of his repeated refrains as he declines to play favourites with anyone.

As head of the finance ministry, Mukherjee has a lot on his plate besides presenting the full Budget for the coming year. He will be working against a deadline, as the Congress party had said in its manifesto that the Budget would be tabled in 45 days of getting elected to office. ?Efforts will be made to present the Budget in due time,? was all he said on Saturday.

Yet, finance will just be one of the subjects for the senior minister, who has always been seen as the eternal ?No. 2? in the Congress heirarchy. Mukherjee?s reputation as a troubleshooter has preceded him. His capacity to handle work can be gauged from the fact that he headed over a 100 GoMs in the previous government. This was besides the political firefighting that he used to engage in, sometimes changing chief ministers in Maharashtra or stitching alliances with like-minded parties.

In fact, much of his Saturday evening was spent attending to the immediate political problem at hand ? how to placate and get the DMK on board. Tamil Nadu in-charge Ghulam Nabi Azad spent more than an hour at his residence in the evening with the two obviously trying to negotiate a solution with the grand old man of southern politics, DMK chief and Tamil Nadu chief minister M Karunanidhi.

Mukherjee is also a veritable encyclopedia on Congress movement and the organisation and has been a minister in all party governments since the mid-?70s, save the Rajiv Gandhi government between 1984 and 1989. This was the period when he tried to float his own party but returned to Congress fold later. As finance minister, Mukherjee was Manmohan Singh?s boss, who was then the governor of RBI. He was, in fact, always seen as a contender for Prime Ministership until Singh beat him to it.

Today, the world has come full circle for the man who has been rated as one of the best finance ministers in the world. What remains to be seen is whether he plays the cat and mouse game while handling the demands of various ministries and states.