A financial journalist, the story goes, called up the residence of Montek Singh Ahluwalia, at the centre stage of economic policy from the ...
A financial journalist, the story goes, called up the residence of Montek Singh Ahluwalia, at the centre stage of economic policy from the 1980s to 2014. These were, not coincidentally, the growth years of the Indian economy, and Ahluwalia was the go to person for businessmen, academics, foreign diplomats, politicians, and of course, journalists.
“Can I speak to Dr Ahluwalia?” the journalist asked. A woman’s voice replied: “Speaking”. The puzzled journalist then asked: “Can I speak to the other Dr Ahluwalia?”. There was silence on the other end. “There is only one Dr Ahluwalia in this house”, the woman replied, and put down the phone.
This story is oft-repeated precisely because it captures what is widely believed to be Isher Judge Ahluwalia’s role in the defining marriage of Indian economic policy. She was after all the brilliant student from India who did a PhD in the world’s best economics programme (MIT) with the world’s best economist (Paul Samuelson). Her research on the lack of economic productivity in India’s licence-quota-permit-raj had made her a much-cited scholar.
In contrast, her bureaucrat husband Montek Ahluwalia was more babu than brain, more builder than architect. Montek Ahluwalia may have spent three decades on Raisina Hill advocating the policies...
