India's Finance Ministers

India's Finance Ministers
Author: A.K. Bhattacharya
Publisher: Penguin Random House India Private Limited
Total Pages: 538
Release: 2023-05-22
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 935708102X

Independent India has so far witnessed twenty-eight finance ministers. But only a handful of them could leave their mark on the exchequer or North Block, the headquarters of the Indian finance ministry. From Independence to Emergency: India's Finance Ministers 1947-1977 is the story of India's unforgettable finance ministers who shaped India's economy in the first thirty years after Independence. The book highlights the significant difference that these finance ministers made to the management of the Indian economy and to the policy evolution of the government, and who thus left an indelible mark on the psyche of Indian citizens. It attempts to measure the impact these decisions left, not only on India's economic system but also on its political system, and looks at to what extent the decisions were influenced by the socio-economic backgrounds of the finance ministers. Full of interesting anecdotes, the book is the first in-depth account of the crucial role these finance ministers have played in the functioning of India's economy.

Confessions of a Swadeshi Reformer

Confessions of a Swadeshi Reformer
Author: Yashwant Sinha
Publisher: Penguin Books India
Total Pages: 284
Release: 2007
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780670999521

The Chandra Shekhar Government Had Fallen. Fresh Elections Had Been Called. Yashwant Sinha, Finance Minister In The Caretaker Government, Was In Patna, Contesting For The Lok Sabha Against Tough Opposition, When A Senior Officer From The Finance Ministry Brought An Urgent File For His Signature: India Needed To Mortgage Gold To Obtain A Loan From The Bank Of England To Tide Over A Payments Crisis There Were Just Enough Foreign Exchange Reserves To Pay For Two Weeks Imports. The Crisis Was Not Of Their Government S Making, But It Devolved On Sinha To Take This Drastic Step. If He Ever Got The Opportunity, He Promised Himself, He Would Make Sure That The Country Never Had To Face Such A Crisis Again. The Opportunity Came In 1998, When Sinha Was Appointed Finance Minister In The Nda Government Led By Vajpayee And Was Faced With Yet Another Crisis: The Nuclear Tests In May That Year Resulted In Sanctions And A Possible Flashpoint. The Finance Minister S Decision To Issue The Resurgent India Bonds Helped Tide Over It, Raising 4.25 Billion In Two Weeks From Nris, And The Country Hasn T Looked Back Since. Yashwant Sinha Was Finance Minister For Four Years, Until 2002, And Presented Five Budgets. In Confessions Of A Swadeshi Reformer He Gives Us The Inside Story Of How The Framework For The Growth That Has Taken Place Subsequently Was Laid In That Time. From The Reforms That Were Initiated To The Politics That Threatened All Initiative, The Opposition From Within The Party As Also Outside It, Which Tried To Derail The Process, Sinha Pulls No Punches In This Candid Memoir. Nor Does He Shy Away From Discussing The Attempts To Cut Him Down To Size, Including The Proposal To Split Up The Ministry Of Finance, And The Various Controversies Of The Time From The Two Uti Scams To The Flex Industries Case And The Mauritius Tax Treaty Case (In Which He Was Alleged To Have Favoured His Daughter-In-Law), All Of Which He Faced With Equanimity And Strength Of Character. There Are, Besides, Piquant Observations On The Jostling For Position And Prime Postings That Any Minister Has To Face. In The Popular Eye, The Finance Minister Is Often Seen As A Taxing Machine, A Man Entrusted, As One British Chancellor Of The Exchequer Put It, With A Certain Amount Of Misery Which Is His Duty To Distribute As Fairly As He Can. This May Perhaps Be True, But, As This Memoir Shows, The Finance Minister Can Also Bestow A Few Pleasant Surprises.

Syama Prasad Mookerjee and Indian Politics

Syama Prasad Mookerjee and Indian Politics
Author: Prashanto K. Chatterji
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2015
Genre:
ISBN: 9789385386114

This book is a pioneering work on the multi-faceted contributions of Dr Syama Prasad Mookerjee to India. Dr Mookerjee helped to oust the League ministry in Bengal (1941) and install the Progressive Coalition ministry of which he was the Finance Minister. He resigned in 1942 to protest against the Governor's policy of repression against the Quit India movement. As the Working President of the Hindu Mahasabha, he was responsible for its ascendancy in Indian politics from 1940-1944. As the Central Industries and Supplies Minister (1947-1950), he framed free India's industrial policy but resigned due to acute differences with Prime Minister Nehru's appeasement policy towards Pakistan. He, together with M.S. Golwalkar of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, formed a new political party, the Bharatiya Jan Sangh. Despite Dr Mookerjee's tragic death in 1953, the party drew adherents from all parts of India, and eventually was renamed the Bharatiya Janata Party.

Who Moved My Interest Rate

Who Moved My Interest Rate
Author: Duvvuri Subbarao
Publisher: Penguin UK
Total Pages: 347
Release: 2017-07-24
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 938605745X

An insider's view of the Reserve Bank of India Duvvuri Subbarao's term as the governor of the Reserve Bank of India from 2008 to 2013 was an unusually turbulent period. The global financial crisis erupted; India was in the throes of a decade-high, stubborn inflation rate, followed by a sharp depreciation of the rupee. This was also a time when questions about the breadth of the RBI's mandate, autonomy and accountability became subjects of debate in financial circles and in the media at large. Who Moved My Interest Rate is an authoritative account of the dilemmas and quandaries he confronted while leading the Reserve Bank through these extraordinary economic and political challenges.

Indian Fiscal Federalism

Indian Fiscal Federalism
Author: Y.V. Reddy
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 335
Release: 2018-12-27
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0199097046

Likening fiscal federalism to a game between the Union and the States, and among the States themselves, Indian Fiscal Federalism lays bare the complex rules of play. It examines the pivotal role of Finance Commissions and assesses momentous events since 2014, such as the replacement of the Planning Commission by NITI Aayog, the emergence of the GST Council, and the controversies surrounding the Fifteenth Finance Commission. States, and among the States themselves, Indian Fiscal Federalism lays bare the complex rules of play. It examines the pivotal role of Finance Commissions and assesses momentous events since 2014, such as the replacement of the Planning Commission by NITI Aayog, the emergence of the GST Council, and the controversies surrounding the Fifteenth Finance Commission. A contemporary, timely, and comprehensive analysis of fiscal federalism in India, this practitioners’ perspective is a must-read for all those interested in the subject.

Policymaker's Journal

Policymaker's Journal
Author: Kaushik Basu
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 468
Release: 2021-07-06
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 8195057152

This book charts the course of Kaushik Basu’s career over seven years, as he moved out of the cloisters of academe to the frenetic world of policymaking, first in India as Chief Economic Adviser to the Indian Government and after that as Chief Economist at the World Bank in Washington. The Indian years were a period of high inflation, growth challenges (as the global financial crisis arrived in India), and also a remarkable growth recovery story, with India moving past China’s GDP growth rate. There were corruption scandals breaking, causing widespread street protests, a lot of late-night decision-making, which one knew would rock the stock market the next day, and getting to know politicians who were outstanding as statesmen in the midst of all this, and also many who were not. The World Bank years weren’t that close to actual policymaking, but nevertheless breath-taking in their scope. They ranged from interacting with policymakers in tiny remote countries like Samoa to gigantic nations with comparable heft, such as China. It entailed sitting down with leading researchers to compute and announce global numbers on extreme poverty and rankings on how easy it is to do business in different countries (fully aware that there would be calls from irate finance ministers as soon as these were published). And there was the handling of politics within the World Bank, which could actually be as enjoyable as any global economic problem! This book is a revised version of the diary that Kaushik Basu kept for seven years. Revised because he often wrote the diary in a hurry at the day’s or even week’s end. He has now inserted some reflections in retrospect, without altering any descriptions of what actually happened.

Bad Money

Bad Money
Author: Vivek Kaul
Publisher: Harper Collins
Total Pages: 252
Release: 2020-06-10
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9353577225

Over the last decade, Indian banks in general and the government-owned public sector ones in particular have gradually got themselves into a big mess. Their bad loans, or loans which haven't been repaid for ninety days or more, crossed Rs 10 lakh crore as of 31 March 2018. To put it in perspective, this figure is approximately seven times the value of farm loan waivers given by all state governments in India put together. And this became the bad money of the Indian financial system. Why were the corporates unable to return these loans? Was it because they had no intention of doing so?Who were the biggest defaulters of them all? Are Vijay Mallya and Nirav Modi just the tip of the iceberg?How much money has the government spent trying to rescue these banks?How are the private sector banks gradually taking over Indian banking?Is your money in public sector banks safe?How are you paying for this in different ways?And what are the solutions to deal with this? In Bad Money, Vivek Kaul answers these and many more questions, peeling layer after layer of the NPA (non-performing assets) problem. He goes back to the history of Indian banking, providing a long, deep and hard look at the overall Indian economy. The result is a gripping financial thriller that is a must for understanding a crisis that threatens our banking system and economy.

1991

1991
Author: Sanjaya Baru
Publisher: Aleph Book Company
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2016
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9789384067687

Political biography of P.V. Narasimha Rao, 1921-2004, former prime minister of India.

India's World

India's World
Author: Rajiv Dogra
Publisher: Rupa Publications India Pvt Limited
Total Pages: 218
Release: 2020
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9789389967401

When Narasimha Rao became the prime Minister in 1991, just a billion dollars separated India from bankruptcy. He was told by finance minister Manmohan Singh, that Petrol pumps would run dry after two weeks. India was forced to ship 46.8 million tonnes of gold to secure dollar 400 million in loans from the Bank of England and Bank of Japan. This blow to the National pride may not have been comparable to the military humiliation of 1962, but it was bad enough. Carved in riveting prose, India's world is about such trials and many triumphs of the country. Since Independence, eight prime ministers, in particular, have been the principal architects of India's rise. From Nehru, Venerated as a resolute statesman and one of the great political minds of the last century, to Modi who is acknowledged as a determined doer, the book offers a crystal clear portrait of India's leaders. This lively volume celebrates the myriad ways in which they have made history. It asks and answers questions that people often debate about. Who was the great Indian prime Minister, complete in every respect If there was one, could it be Nehru, Indira or Rao Or, is it Modi Elegantly written by one of India's finest strategic minds, it is a must-read for those curious about India's place in the world. There are messages too for a future Indian prime Minister on what to expect.