If only Mr. Sinha had realized that he was among the top two Finance Ministers this country has produced (numero uno being obviously Manmohan Singh 1991-1995, and not to be confused with the PM not allowed to function as such 2004-??), he would have written a somewhat different book.

On the whole, Confessions of a Swadeshi Reformer is more defense than offense. A pity. And some important issues are not defended at all. For example, swadeshi economics, also known as CPI(M) economics, which Mr. Sinha defines as "swadeshi does not mean isolation, swadeshi means making India strong and self-reliant so that we can compete with the world and win"(p.56). Let us see now - all those who believe their country should not be strong, and should not compete, and not win, please raise their left hand. Oops, there is no one doing so, not even Hugo Chavez of Venezuela or Castro of Cuba, or even the CPI(M) of India. The critical difference between countries and economic policies is in the lengths leaders go to stress the swadeshi part; that is what distinguishes an economically unfree country (a swadeshi economics country) from an economically free one (a non swadeshi country).

The first budget Mr. Sinha presented on June 1, 1998, the budget in the aftermath of the Pokharan bomb exploded less than a month earlier, was a swadeshi budget, the one not received so well by anybody except the BJP. It raised taxes here, lowered taxes there, all done traditional swadeshi style "our concept of swadeshi was clearly creating a great deal of apprehension in the minds of people abroad". Mr. Sinha conveniently forgets to mention apprehensions at home. This was what one commentator, myself, wrote about the budget on June 2, Economic Times: "We now know both the political and economic vision of the BJP - explode bombs whenever you can. The Budget is a bomb which is likely to form craters in the recent economic growth profile of India. With its tinkerization, it will get us back to the oh, so comforting, pre-80's Hindu growth rate. Raise a tax here, lower a tax there... only other gainers of a high and varied tariff regime are the government bureaucrats who have to decide which tariff item goes into what slot - solid, liquid or gas. Some money changes hands and the solid becomes a gas. Surely, India did not need more corruption. Surely, I am wrong". And Mr. Sinha does not realize that a comparison with Indira Gandhi, for economic policies is the most insulting statement he could make about himself and his policies. "But there was appreciation as well [for the 1998 budget]. One of my parliamentary colleagues said, 'If you sat back with your eyes closed during the early part of Mr. Sinha's speech, it could well have been Mrs. Gandhi holding forth' (p.63) So now we know, correctly, what a swadeshi budget is - Mrs. Gandhi economics.

But the BJP, and Mr. Sinha, soon realized that swadeshi or Mrs. Gandhi economics was the shortest way back to the justifiably derided "Hindu rate of growth". The first signs came with him earning the soubriquet, Roll-Back Sinha. At that time, it was an insult. Today, roll back is a compliment. For what Mr. Sinha and the BJP showed was a significant lack of arrogance. Better to admit that one is human, and therefore liable to make mistakes. It takes a confident man to admit he is wrong. Only the highly insecure do not change their minds, despite all the evidence that they have made a mistake. And insecurity and arrogance are often the twin sides of the same coin.

There have been a lot of confident policy changes brought about by Mr. Sinha. First the rejection of the slave like addiction to the 5 pm slot for the Union budget. Why was such a time chosen - because the British MPs would just be lounging in to work at noon in the time of the Raj. Strange that for more than 50 years the mostly, almost exclusively, Freedom Fighters from the Congress party never saw it fit to change the time of the budget to one that suited the Indian time zone. Mr. Sinha first changed it to 2 pm, and then to 11 am, a time when even the Indian MPs were at work. Another reform - advocating that the Budget should not be marked "Top Secret" until the day of its release.

It is not the change in cosmetics, important as they were, that will mark Mr. Sinha as a front-line reformer. There was CENVAT, the first steps towards a national VAT. There was compression of the various, and nefarious, levels of custom duties. There was privatization of government firms making bread and computers; there was encouragement of FDI; there were steps towards the dismantling of the administered price structure in fertilizer, petroleum, and sugar.

There were no "in the name of the poor" cesses and taxes, there wasn't any introduction of bad, indefensible taxes. Several, too numerous to mention, of Mr. Sinha's economic reforms have been reversed by the CPM - Communist Maximum Programme - of the present Ms. Sonia Gandhi led UPA. History will mark the UPA regime as one of the more depressing periods in Indian economic history - from a policy point of view. That Indian economic performance has been as good as it, despite extreme UPA populism, is the most important acknowledgement of the historic role that Mr. Sinha played as a finance minister (after his Mrs. Gandhi swadeshi avatar).

Messrs. Vajpayee-Sinha put India onto the new growth path in which she finds herself today. Not by swadeshi, but by embracing the principles of our ancestors (Kautilya) and the principles of the ancient and modern world. What Mr. Sinha did in 1999, and proceeded to do over the next three years, was to reform the financial sector, in particular the control-freak administered interest rate regime that the BJP had inherited from the Congress. It was this high real interest rate regime that prevented the Indian economy from growing faster after the major 1991-1993 economic reforms. These major reforms produced only a 0.5 percent extra GDP growth, not the 2 to 3 percent extra GDP growth these reforms merited.

It was left to Vajpayee-Sinha to make right what Rao-Singh forgot to correct. And it was a mega-item. Interest rate on the "benchmark" small savings were reduced from 14.5 percent to 9.5 percent in four years. This led to an equivalent fall in the interest rate on corporate borrowings. With inflation staying low, and near constant, real rates declined by 500 to 600 basis points. If a half percentage point cut (or increase) in real rates is a revolution in most countries, then what is a 500 to 600 basis point cut? A transformation from a begging bowl India to a shining India. An India at a $1000 per capita GDP from a $500 per capita GDP. A confident, assertive, (swadeshi!) India. An India worthy of competing with China again; an India whose natural rate of growth, with additional (mis)reforms, is at least 8 -9 percent per annum. With even basic reforms, the potential is well over 10 percent GDP growth. History will rightly judge Mr. Sinha for being a major economic reform