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A tightrope walk till the Budget for Ajai Singh

P Vaidyanathan Iyer & Aditi Phadnis

Ajai Vikram Singh is the odd-man-out in every sense of the term. He is the first man since Javed Choudhury to be appointed revenue secretary from the post of special secretary.

Most of his predecessors underwent a secretarial stint in some other government department before being appointed the revenue secretary.

S Narayan, for instance, went to the revenue department after serving as the petroleum secretary.

With three years to go before retirement, and a revenue secretaryship under his belt, sky is the limit for Singh.

But then there are certain hazards of being too successful too soon. Choudhary's dizzying rise created such a typhoon of pressure and political counter-pressure that even a talented bureaucrat like him had to retire as health secretary.

Therefore, Singh has a rewarding job ahead of him, if he can keep it.

On the other hand, judging by the state of the revenue department today, Singh can only succeed in his new job. The department's stock is so low, after being racked with scams, that it can only get better, not worse.

Rivalry and turf wars rage between the Indian Revenue Service and the Indian Administrative Service, leading many in the department to believe complacently that, like many before him, Singh will be led, rather than leading the revenue department.

They should rapidly correct themselves. As the in-charge of the newly constituted defence procurement board in the defence ministry, Singh was responsible for defence purchases, commonly referred to as snake pits.

The snakes didn't get far. He's known for being incorruptible while spending all the money given to him. There are officers who are one or the other, it's not easy to do both.

The most important thing about Singh is he has been hand-picked by the finance minister. When Uttar Pradesh was carved up, Singh was one of the few bureaucrats who actually opted to go to Uttaranchal.

Being a 1967 batch officer, he was appointed chief secretary, but spent only a short time there. When Jaswant Singh became defence minister he was asked to return to the Centre in the defence ministry.

Now, in the finance ministry, it can be safely said that any move by the revenue secretary will have the full backing of the minister.

Singh will have to walk a tightrope in the run-up to the Union Budget 2003-04. Appeasing the middle-class is the Bharatiya Janata Party's top priority.

The finance minister has already provided some tax sops and has promised more. The drought could nullify revenue gains made in the first few months.

Setting realistic revenue targets and fulfilling them will, therefore, be the revenue secretary's first job.

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