Where?s the real tale?

India was not the only country that began to walk the path of globalisation in 1991. Around the same time, a swathe of economies began on the same route.

Several tripped on the way; India did not. The reasons why India arrived in 2012 with most of the lessons of the reforms firmly in place are principally two. The reforms began to deliver results. The other was that the band of brothers who spearheaded the reforms never really gave up on their faith, despite all the political changes the country went through.

A Festschrift on P Chidambaram is an interesting space to dwell on this journey. The members are mostly there to reminiscence well, and the time spanned is long enough to make their differences appear more co-habitable.

This is where Sameer Kochhar?s collection of essays in honour of finance minister Palaniappan Chidambaram, An Agenda for India?s Growth, falls short. A new generation has grown up since the then commerce minister in his first year in the cabinet stood India?s trade policy on its head on July 4, 1991. But reading through the book, it is difficult to conjure up the drama of that evening or the budget just 20 days later, which together shook up India.

In fact, the 13-point export-import policy announced by Chidambaram as commerce minister made employees of some departments so mad that they went over to his office to wreck destruction, within days after he announced the abolition of the office of chief controller of imports and exports. Yet, that sense of battling the odds are absent from the essays in this volume.

July 1991 was, in fact, possibly the month if such calendar-based ascribing of reforms can be made when India woke up to a new economic dawn. The trade policy, the budget and the new industrial policy together changed everything that Indian industry, bureaucracy and the public had held as immutable in the economic life of the country in the decades since 1947, along with the Hindu rate of growth.

Kochhar?s book, if it were a film, would have been billed as the most brilliant star cast ever assembled to tell in detail the exciting story of those reforms and the road ahead. The reader is entitled to a read that matches this star cast, but is left disappointed.

The closest one that comes to the heady days are the ones by Montek Singh Ahluwalia, describing how India?s first exim policy got written that July. The other is NK Singh when Chidambaram delivered his dream budget.

About the trade policy, Ahluwalia writes in only reported speech. There are no quotes from the minister, none whatsoever from Ahluwalia too. He, however, makes an interesting point that the trigger for the announcement of the policy was suggested by Manmohan Singh on July 3 in a phone call to Ahluwalia directly, before informing Chidambaram. ?He (Singh) said he would explain this to Chidambaram a little later, but I should brief him in advance.? Singh was asking him to prepare the ground for the withdrawal of cash compensatory support for exporters, a very popular instrument in those days since the rupee was being devalued in any case.

NK Singh is pithier. ?Chidambaram introduced in the budget of 1997-98 far-reaching tax reforms. This popularly came to be known as the dream budget.?

That?s it? Surely students of Indian economic history of this period are entitled to know a bit more.

It is, of course, just not possible for a Festschrift to dwell only on the personality. From an ensemble of the chief movers of the Indian reform story, one obviously does expect a lot more.

On that score, the book does not disappoint. Writing about the issues that face the stock exchange and their conflict of interest, Vijay Kelkar pens a spirited defence of the Bimal Jalan committee recommendations. Similarly, UK Sinha outlines the trajectory reforms in the securities market have taken. Subbarao?s piece had already appeared elsewhere but the other pieces are fresh and give a clear sense of the direction each author has for the Indian economy.

Again one is left with a feeling that the authors have taken pains to skirt controversies, taking comfort in dragging the discussion to the plane of principles than giving the readers a ringside view of the developments. Sinha narrates just one episode from the post-Lehman Brothers days, which could have instead been held up in detail to demonstrate just why, despite differences, each regulator has batted for the interests of the economy.

Some of that reticence has possibly got to do with the fact that most of the authors are active in the financial sector, but would that caveat make the book more appealing to the reader? One ends up feeling that this is merely an introduction; the real tale will come later.