ARUN JAITLEY

‘We have to save wickets, bat for a full 50 and not wait for slog overs’

2014-09-07 -

THERE’S A difference between the Narendra Modi and AB Vajpayee gover nments. In 1998, when the BJP took over, there was no negative environment in the country and neither in 1999. We had to add to what was being built. When we took over now there was certainly a negative perception about the country. You had to clean up the drawing board and rewrite some scripts.

Secondly, in Mr Vajpayee’s gover nment, there was already a set of very senior and established politicians. Today, people joining the gover nment have an opportunity to lear n on the job, to prove themselves. Therefore, you find a lot of very hard-working ministers.

The styles of both the prime ministers are different too. Mr Vajpayee could, with a smile on his face, give you a message which you had to understand. Mr Modi is a hands-on Prime Minister. He works almost from mor ning to night. When I was a minister in Mr Vajpayee's gover nment, I used to leave office by about 6 o’clock, I would have coffee at the India Inter national Centre. I don’t think I may be able to leave now before 11 o’clock. That's the difference.

HANDLING DEFENCE

The defence ministry is very structured and you have many relationships with the services. The services have their own decision-making processes. But in the governance of that ministry, we’ve been ultra conservative. We’ve been conservative in the process of acquisition of weapons. You can’t afford to be very defensive in the ministry itself. For instance, we don’t allow middlemen. But there are some invisible people operating. If we get to know about some case, we immediately blacklist them.

I’ve made sure that the defence acquisition council meet at least once a month. In our last meeting, we decided that only Indian companies will apply for a supply of a very large number of transport aircraft. So, the idea is that people will enter into joint ventures and some private sector capacity building will take place in an area where our capacity was limited.

CHALLENGES IN FINANCE

In finance, the challenges are far greater. There are a lot of issues that have to be cleared in relation to taxation, certain policies. However, we have some advantages. We are a single party, majority gover nment. We have no agenda for or against any particular private sector or any segment. We have no qualms calling ourselves a gover nment which wants to encourage business and industry in India. With these advantages, we have to build on.

REKINDLING INVESTMENT

If we simply say that we are allowing FDI in a sector;