ON MONDAY, just a day before the Budget session of Parliament begins, officials of all finance ministry departments had a get-together at the historic Great Hall which is often used as a common passage to cross from one side of North Block (finance ministry ) to other side (ministry of home affairs). Those who were present included expenditure secretary Ratan P Watal, DEA secretary Shakti Kanta Das, revenue secretary Hasmukh Adhia, disinvestment secretary Neeraj Kumar Gupta and chief economic adviser Arvind Subramanian among others. The occasion was the launch of an exhibition on coins and currency in India, but it was during the function, senior finance ministry official and 1979 batch ICAS officer Mohan J Joseph…