THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Finance minister Dr T.M. Thomas Isaac looks like a parent who has found the perfect birthday gift for his children and is too impatient for them to have a look at it. “They will marvel at what is going to happen,” a beaming Isaac said about the ‘Alteration Memorandum’ he will present in the Assembly on July 8. His smile has the impishness of a man who knows he has got his calculations right.
Mr Isaac is relaxing after lunch in the windy portico of the inspection bungalow of Harbour Engineering Department in Vizhinjam on Sunday. The tiled-roof squat building sits atop a rocky cliff, overlooking the Arabian Sea. Mr Isaac is enthralled by the vastness of the ocean, by the roar of its turmoil. “This is unbelievable," he said. "Nowhere else will you get this ambience, not even in Kovalam."
The never-ending vastness of the ocean and the mind-numbing complexity of putting the state's finances in order seem to have the same effect on Mr Isaac: they egg him on, electrify him. "The finances are so bad that there is very little I can do within the budget framework," Isaac said.
And this, rather than frustrating him, has given him a high. He is getting ready to break all fiscal conventions. "No other finance minister in any other state in the country would have done what I am about to," he said. He is like the hero who looks cornered but has a wink in his eye that says: "just wait and see." The finance minister said that all major areas, be it education or health or sports or tourism or culture, would be transformed.
“This will be no mere improvement but a quantum jump, and it will be felt not five or ten years down the line but right next year," Mr Isaac said. He will increase welfare pensions, provide rice free and change the way the children in the state learn. But does he have the money for all this. "That's where the trick lies," he said with a guffaw, as if challenging us to figure that out.
The home work was done long before he was sworn in as finance minister. "I have held detailed discussions with people during the International Congress on Kerala Studies, and also for the preparation of the LDF manifesto. I don't need to talk to more people," Mr Isaac said. The seaside house keeps him insulated from visitors, but it also allows him an indulgence. "Vizhinjam offers the best sea fish varieties one can think of," Mr Isaac said.
