The Hindu Business Line : The real Chidambaram

Aside of the Finance Minister that we saw the day of the book launch, your eyes seem to well up when you talked about your mother and the faculties who were actually present there. Many people see you as sort of mechanical and a policy-maker with no heart really in that sense. Has the real Chidambaram been misunderstood?

I do not know who is the real Chidambaram; the point is that I have to be stunned; I have to be stiff, this seat is not an easy seat. Ultimately the buck stops at my table if something goes terribly wrong, but I suppose that there are other sides. I usually don't reveal other sides of myself. I am a private person.

What do you think has been your biggest achievement in this tenure as the Finance Minister?

Keeping growth at over 8 per cent. This has nothing to do with me, it has got to go with the government, the UPA, the Congress government, the Congress President, the Prime Minister, all of them get much larger credit. But the fact is, I can look back and say that the period I was Finance Minister, we were growing at 8 per cent. I cannot think of any other Finance Minister in the last fifty years that for three-four years running, if they were growing at 8 per cent. So I enjoy that result.

The title of your book is also An Outsiders Perspective and you have said that the book would be very interesting if it were `an insider's perspective.' But how different would it really be?

It would be very different. It is that book inside me except that it cannot be written now.

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