Opinion | BJP, NDA have lost their consensus man in Arun Jaitley
2 min read . Updated: 25 Aug 2019, 10:57 PM ISTJaitley would be most remembered for his soft skills and ability to forge consensus
Around noon on Saturday, Arun Jaitley succumbed to his ailment. While most were bracing for the worst, especially after he was hospitalized a little over a week ago, Jaitley’s demise still came as a shock. Guess somewhere deep down, everyone was convinced that Jaitley would bounce back, like he had done in the last five years—battling a series of life-threatening illnesses.
Eulogies continue to pour in, capturing the many aspects of Jaitley’s public life which began with such promise in student politics in Delhi University, a little over four decades ago. The fact that it coincided with the imposition of Emergency, overnight catapulted him to the national limelight. Personally, it was the first time I heard of Jaitley; my brother, who was Jaitley’s contemporary, would talk about his role in organizing protests in Delhi University against Emergency—for the record, Jaitley was arrested and incarcerated for 19 months. Many years later, one had the occasion, by virtue of being a journalist, to cross paths with Jaitley; by then, he was one of the prominent young public faces of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and who would later evolve into the de facto second-most powerful person in Narendra Modi’s cabinet—at one stage, he held joint charge of the portfolios of defence and finance.
Looking back at the former finance minister’s life, it is apparent that Jaitley’s greatest strength was an astute legal brain, a congenial personality and phenomenal self-belief. His entire public life was built on this foundation. Exactly how he was able to reach out, even to those who were ideologically opposed to him and the BJP. Something that came good on several occasions for the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) in its first tenure under the leadership of PM Modi. But for these soft skills, the NDA, which was in a minority in the Rajya Sabha, would have missed out on realising its desired legislative agenda. As the leader of the Upper House, Jaitley enjoyed vantage position; he combined this with personal outreach to win over key segments of the Opposition.
As a finance minister, his two great legacies are the rollout of the goods and services tax (GST) and the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC)—both of which required and received bipartisan consensus. While GST was 17 years in the making, the IBC was introduced and passed within a year. And the bulk of the credit for this has to undoubtedly go to Jaitley.
GST implemented the idea of “One Nation, One Tax", something which economically unified the country for the first time. A collateral gain was that it sowed the seeds for a new federal polity—where states who agreed to pool their tax sovereignty emerged as equal stakeholders. Similarly, the IBC put in place an institutional mechanism to deal with the gigantic pile-up of bad debt with banks—due to a combination of bad business decisions and crony capitalism. It put in place a rules-based regime instead of the preferred system of an exception-based regime to deal with businesses that had gone belly-up, even while it put wilful defaulters on notice—several promoters have been relieved of their ownership of their companies. Getting these two legislations parliamentary approval was a huge ask. Without Jaitley shepherding it, it’s unlikely they would have been green-lighted by Rajya Sabha where the NDA was outnumbered.
It is clear that Jaitley would be most remembered for his soft skills and the ability to forge consensus. They are tough shoes to fill.
Anil Padmanabhan is managing editor of Mint and writes every week on the intersection of politics and economics.
Comments are welcome at anil.p@livemint.com
