Political discourse has deteriorated in the country, and there is a dearth of cordiality, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said on Friday.
Simple acts like offering a coffee to a political opponent can be “grossly misunderstood”, the senior minister said.
Sitharaman, who also handles the corporate affairs portfolio, said this was not the case in the past and recalled the bonhomie between Chakravarti Rajagopalachari of the Congress and P Ramamurti of the Communist Party of India in Madras Presidency and Tamil Nadu despite being staunch political rivals.
The minister said Rajaji used to carry coffee from his home in a flask, and interjected Ramamurti mid-speech to offer him the coffee, after which they went back to their respective ideological positions.
“I can’t imagine giving a cup of coffee (now)… it can be grossly misunderstood,” Sitharaman said, speaking at the launch of veteran banker N Vaghul’s book ‘Reflections’ here.
Sitharaman said there was some personal regard for one another even in the most bitter of the political rivalries and added that leaders were full of amity and cordiality then.
She also made references to Vaghul’s frequent run-ins with the political executives and added that wielding of power by a person or those around him can make or break a career.
The minister said she had also heard about how bankers had to constantly face interferences by the political executive – Vaghul quit from a state-owned bank at 47 – and also alluded to a specific instance of a Minister of State trying to assert power in the absence of his senior, a Cabinet Minister.
The minister also said that for forty years, each government competed with the previous one for showing that they are more socialist than the dispensation that preceded it.
She said that for the first time in India’s history, the budget presented by her in 2021 had a mention of the word “privatisation”, courtesy of the backing of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Vaghul, a veteran banker, said the degradation of values in the country is “bothering” him, pointing specifically to corruption symbolises not only a person’s greed but also a decline in moral values.
He said the reforms of 1991 were half-baked as they did not fully dismantle the state-run enterprises, and called himself a servant of the free market ever since he heard Rajaji attack communists.
Speaking at the same event, veteran banker KV Kamath called Vaghul, with whom he had a long association, as the builder of a new construct for banking in India.
Industrialist Ajay Piramal, whose company counted on Vaghul as a board member for over 25 years, said apart from building ICICI Bank into a formidable bank, Vaghul also was central in the establishment of the rating agency Crisil and also encouraged diversity.
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