'My life is like a game of snakes and ladders'

union finance minister yashwant sinha's political obituary has been written several times. yet he always survives, to present yet another budget the north block office is so large that for one moment you almost miss the blue safari suit-clad figure seated on a desk, beneath a portrait of jayaprakash narayan and atal behari vajpayee. "i must be the only minister in the central government who's kept jp's picture in his office," says union finance minister yashwant sinha. he should too. jp's the man he marched with in 1974, at the height of the nav nirman movement. "i wasn't chargesheeted as the magistrate on duty was a friend of mine," says sinha. so isn't it odd that after 24 years of working in the indian administrative service, sinha should quit to join the janata party in 1984, and end up in the bjp in 1993? "yes, i suppose you could say that," he says. "but when i got disillusioned by the thought of the janata party factions merging after all that we'd gone through, the choice was between the congress and the bjp. i had always been in anti-congress platforms, so the former was out. that left only the bjp, whose secular credentials, as you say, were questionable. but i felt that secularism had become more of a political slogan than a substantive one." yet who would have thought that he could have become the country's finance minister? especially after his first experience with chandra shekhar as prime minister and the country being left with practically no foreign reserves? "people don't realise it wasn't of my making. i had inherited a situation over which i had no control." but how has he felt subsequently, with practically every decision drawing flak? "everything i do is controversial. my life is like a snakes and ladder game. just when i think i'm reaching somewhere, somebody pulls the ladder from under me," he says. so whether it was the last-minute decision which saw him getting the finance portfolio and not jaswant singh in the 1998 ministry. or whether it was the recent reshuffle where he was to be replaced by arun jaitley. "it doesn't bother me," he says. not even when his political obituary is written practically every month? "no. for 43 years, i've been somewhere or the other. i'm very philosophical about it, as i know i'm competent." what about corruption then? "let me tell you something about it. my elder son, sumant, was graduating from harvard business school and was getting the prestigious baker scholarship but he noticed a calculating error in the marksheet. he brought it to the attention of the dean and lost out on the scholarship. but he was especially recognised at the convocation, which is why i went there. do you think the son of a corrupt man would have done that?" as for his daughter-in-law, he says she's a phd in finance from wharton. "why would she need any favours from me?" these whispers about his children do bother him though. "in my 15 years of political life, i have seen such a decline in the dignity of office," he says. it doesn't upset him as much as it does his wife, nilima, a writer of children's fiction. "she's never taken any interest in politics and feels sad when our children, are dragged into this." at 64, he says if he had continued in the ias, he would have probably retired by now as a secretary (he was joint secretary in the ministry of shipping and transport when he quit). "i would have been playing with my grandchildren. but after three years as a joint secretary, i realised i would be doing more of the same for the next 12 years. i wanted to do something on a larger canvas. i had this romantic notion of doing a bunker roy. but chandra shekhar persuaded me to join his party instead." twice in his career as an ias officer, he realised he needed to get out. "once when i was a dc in bihar, i had a row with the chief minister and was transferred. another time was when i was heading the dtc and there was a strike in which a worker was killed. no one came to my rescue. i decided the bureaucracy was not the place for me." he'd first wanted to quit in 1967 and had met jp, but family circumstances didn't permit him to leave. "i would not have been entitled to any pension. then in 1974, again, i was troubled by issues that jp was raising. by 1983, i thought enough is enough. in any case, when jp died in 1979, i always felt i had a promise to keep to him." but does he regret it when he's called power-hungry? "i'd like to remind these people that when vp singh made me a minister of state in the 1989 government, after only five years in politics, if i'd been greedy i would have jumped at the chance." and he says one of his greatest satisfactions is that he went back to hazaribagh in 1998, 14 years after he first contested from that constituency and lost even his deposit. "even after i was elected to the rajya sabha in 1988, i continued to go back and keep in touch." combative and feisty, he doesn't believe in giving up. and though there are people only too willing to write him off, he likes to confound his opponents by surviving. yet again.