Washington DC’s ‘Supreme Bean Counter’ is a poet at heart

WASHINGTON, DC: Sometime during the conversation, Dr Natwar Gandhi, full-time financial watchdog of Washington, DC, and want-to-be-a-full-time-poet, talks about his fascination with writing, his intense desire to “do something before time runs out”. “Writing is rigorous art,” he says. “The great writer Anton Chekhov said that writing must not be an emotional affair, it must be a discipline that is as cold as ice.”

It kind of sums up Gandhi’s attitude towards finance management. The 65-year-old Gujarat-born son of a grocer is the chief finance officer of District of Columbia, and manages a $7 billion (Rs32,000 crore) budget. And what he is best known for is bringing the city out of bankruptcy in 1996 with a deficit of $518 million to a stage where it has a surplus of $1.585 billion. “Our bond rating was ‘junk’ then,” he says. “Today, we are hot property on Wall Street.” 

In 10 years, Gandhi says, he has learned to view his adopted city’s finances with the same cold precision as Chekhov would have viewed his writing. Perhaps that is the reason he is often referred to as “Dr No” – a tough cookie who is so obsessed with balancing the budget he never approves any project.

“It’s perception,” he explains in mock self-defence even as he calls himself the ‘Supreme Bean Counter’. “The truth is that I have a job to do, and that is to make the District of Columbia the most financially sound city in the country. In the process, some people would like me, some won’t. There is an obligation I have to fulfill, repay the confidence the Congress and the Mayor have placed in me.”

Gandhi seems to have succeeded in his quest so far — from a “junk” rating in 1996, companies like Standard and Poor, Moody’s, and Fitch have upped the city’s rating to between A and A+. In English that means, “Guys, your money is safe with the city.”

When he came to the United States as a student more than 40 years ago, Gandhi had only $7 with him and a few clothes. “I wanted to be a poet, but poetry does not build a bank balance. So it was accounting for me.” He completed his PhD in accounting at the Louisiana State University, which got him a job at that General Accounting Office (the American equivalent of Comptroller and Auditor General of India). There, he would pore over tax files of insurance companies to understand the nuances of the system. It was then that he fell in love with Washington, and has been here ever since. “It is a much more accommodating city than New York,” he admits.  

He admits that people have raised doubts over his integrity, his efficiency, his authority, even his ability to steer a city. “That does not deter me. I am kind of obsessed with deficits, and it is my job to deliver a balanced budget not only for a year, but for five years. And if I don’t, they will be gunning for me, won’t they?”

By “they”, Gandhi means the US Congress, which is the only body that can sack him. The mayor, Tony Williams, may have appointed him, but he cannot relieve him of his

This is the last year of Gandhi’s five-year term, during which he not only brought Washington to a financially healthy state, but also published two books of sonnets in Gujarati, America, America and India, India. “I am working on my third collection, and currently, I am writing a sonnet on Karna, from the epic Mahabharat, on how he overcame all odds by sheer hard work and diligence to become of the greatest warriors of all time.” Gandhi could well be writing a sonnet on himself.