This is what he said in a Lunch with BS:
“Those were the best years. In the UF, nobody asked any questions. We all knew the government would fall, but till it did, you could do what you wanted. I slashed tax rates in the 1997 Budget, opened up FDI and carried out disinvestment. H D Deve Gowda was the prime minister. He was very fond of sleeping. I still remember, when I was reading the Budget, his Principal Secretary Satish Chandra was standing in for him and he was sleeping. All he was concerned about was if there was any mention of farmers,” he recalls, his eyes lighting up at the memory. “Nobody has tampered with those tax rates in 14 years.”
“Jaswant Singh was forgettable. Yashwant Sinha had a mixed record. He put in place some things. But he didn’t have a holistic perspective, a philosophy. His prime minister had no interest in finance. The deputy finance minister was a self-confessed ignoramus on finance. And who was his Planning Commission deputy chairman? Jaswant Singh.” Chidambaram says.
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