Since Arun Jaitley’s performance is under the microscope, it is worth exploring how the change of roles and shifting of sides in parliament hall impacted his scorecard. We are all familiar with Arun Jaitley’s brilliant performance as the Opposition leader in the Rajya Sabha during the UPA II regime. His electrifying speeches in the Upper House, which had the treasury benches run for cover on most occasions, often led listeners to imagine how effective he would be as a government minister speaking from the other side of the house. His speech on the Lok Pal bill particularly was a showpiece performance, which will be remembered for a long time to come as a gem in contemporary parliamentary debates. But all those who conjured up an image of him as a super efficient minister were in for disappointment, to say the least, when he actually got the opportunity to become a minister in the Modi Cabinet.

Compare this with the ease with which Nirmala Sitharaman has adapted to her new role. As the official BJP spokesperson, when she turned up for television debates, which unfortunately for her as well as the audience were mostly high decibel gibberish, she often gave the impression of suffering extreme hypertension, although her never-say-die attitude saw her through with considerable success on most occasions. But consider the transformation that has happened to her once she became a minister. As commerce minister her performance was impeccable: a cool customer with no fuss whatsoever; so much so that she has been rewarded with the post of the defence minister, the first lady to occupy the prestigious position after Indira Gandhi.

Arun Jaitley may be a victim of the circumstances, including a bout of ill-health, but in the overall reckoning he presents the picture of a below-par performer. For a major part of the time, he was both defence minister as well as the finance minister, handling two ministries, each of which demanded more attention than a most efficient man can devote in normal circumstances. But in practice he appeared to be in control of neither. As defence minister, most of his time and energy were spent defending the economy, according him little scope to concentrate on defence matters, which had assumed much significance in view of mounting tension and turmoil along the border. As finance minister, he was always on the defensive, having played no real role in major policy decisions like demonetisation and yet having to defend what later turned out to be a draconian move which failed to achieve the desired results but inflicted heavy damage to the economy and heaped untold misery on the lives of common people.

Even in the art of speaking, in which he had excelled in his previous role, Jaitley has been reduced to a pale shadow of his former self. Despite all the hype and build-up, his magnum opus on the launch of GST at midnight of June 30 was a damp squib, wasting a good nights sleep for all those who stayed awake to listen to what turned out to be an insipid speech. If anything was clumsier, it was only the implementation of GST, with all its starting trouble and persisting pitfalls.

Jaitley’s GST launch speech pales into insignificance when compared to Sushma Swaraj’s recent speech at the United Nations where she scored a major diplomatic victory for India by putting Pakistan in the dock for its omissions and commissions. Her presentation had the backing of facts and figures, drama, rhetoric and the power of persuasion, and carried the day for India at the world forum, reminding one of her numerous speeches as the leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha, which won admiration even from her detractors in the treasury benches. The UN speech showed that, despite her absence from action due to ill-health for a certain length of time, she has not lost her firepower, witticism and the bite of sarcasm. Her assertion that India created engineers, scientists and doctors, who save people from dying, while Pakistan created jihadis and terrorists, who take the lives of innocent people, had such dramatic effect that the Pakistani diplomat deputed to respond was forced into making blunders while trying to defend her country’s position. As external affairs minster, Sushma intervened in various crisis situations involving Indians living abroad and secured impressive results as a matter of routine.

Yashwant Sinha has put the entire blame for the economy’s ills at the doorstep of Arun Jaitley, charging him with complete failure and making a mess of the whole thing. He refers to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s claims hat “he has seen poverty from close quarters” and says his finance minister is “working over-time to make sure that all Indians also see it from equally close quarters”. He also asserted how Jaitley had been luckier than his predecessors to be in charge of the finance ministry at a time when lakhs of crores of rupees were at his disposal following the fall in world crude oil prices, a bonanza which according to him was wasted due to lack of imagination on the part of the minister.

Although Jaitley came out fending off the charges, his defence had little bite. His reply that he did not have the ‘luxury of being a former finance minster’ is too mild compared to Sinha’s vitriol and very much uncharacteristic of the Jaitley that we have known as the Opposition leader. (IPA Service)