New Delhi: Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman (overlooked) places a folder case containing the Union Budget 2021-22, during the Budget Session of Parliament, at Parliament House in New Delhi, Monday, February 1, 2021.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will present her fourth straight Union Budget on February 1 when she presents financial statements and tax proposals for the financial year 2022-23 (April 2022 to March 2023).
Here are some budget trivia:-
- India’s first budget: The budget was first presented in India on April 7, 1860, when it was presented to the British Crown by James Wilson, a Scottish economist and statesman of the East India Company.
- The first budget of independent India was presented on 26 November 1947 by the then Finance Minister RK Shanmukham Chetty.
- Longest Budget Speech: Sitharaman set the record for the longest speech of 2 hours 42 minutes while presenting the Union Budget 2020-21 on February 1, 2020. With two pages still left, he had to shorten his speech. She was feeling unwell. He asked the Speaker to consider the remainder of the speech as read. During this speech, he broke his own record of July 2019 – his first budget – when he spoke for 2 hours 17 minutes.
- Most words in budget speech: Manmohan Singh gave the longest budget speech at 18,650 words in 1991 under the Narasimha Rao government.
- In 2018, the then Finance Minister Arun Jaitley’s speech with 18,604 words was the second longest speech in terms of word count. Jaitley spoke for 1 hour 49 minutes.
- Shortest Budget Speech: In 1977, the then Finance Minister Hirubhai Muljibhai Patel gave 800 words.
- The record of presenting the highest budget in the history of the country is in the name of former Prime Minister Moraraji Desai. He presented 10 budgets during his tenure as finance minister during 1962–69, followed by P Chidambaram (9), Pranab Mukherjee (8), Yashwant Sinha (8) and Manmohan Singh (6).
- TIME : Till 1999, as per British rule, the Union Budget was presented at 5 pm on the last working day of February. In 1999, former Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha changed the budget presentation time to 11 am. Arun Jaitley began presenting the Union Budget on February 1 in 2017, departing from the colonial-era tradition of using the last working day of that month.
- Language: Till 1955 the Union Budget was presented in English. However, the Congress-led government later decided to print the budget papers in both Hindi and English.
- Paperless: The Covid-19 pandemic made the budget for 2021-22 paperless – a first in independent India.
- First woman: In 2019, Sitharaman became the second woman to present the budget after Indira Gandhi, who presented the budget for the financial year 1970-71. That year, Sitharaman ditched the traditional budget briefcase and instead used a traditional ‘Bahi-Khata’ with the national emblem to carry speeches and other documents.
- RAILWAY BUDGET: Till 2017, the Railway Budget and the Union Budget were presented separately. After being presented separately for 92 years, in 2017 the Railway Budget was presented together with the Union Budget.
- Printing: Until 1950, the budget was printed in Rashtrapati Bhavan and the place of printing had to be shifted to a press at Minto Road, New Delhi. In 1980, a government press was established in North Block – the seat of the Ministry of Finance.
Here are some iconic budgets
Black Budget: The 1973-74 budget presented by Yashwantrao B Chavan in the Indira Gandhi government was called a black budget because the fiscal deficit during that year was Rs 550 crore. This was at a time when India was going through an acute financial crisis. Carrot and stick budget: The Union Budget, presented by VP Singh to the Congress government on February 28, 1986, was the first step towards ending the license raj in India. It was called the ‘carrot and stick’ budget because it offered both rewards and punishments. It introduced the MODVAT (Revised Value Added Tax) credit to reduce the cascading effect of the tax that consumers had to pay, launching an intense campaign against smugglers, black marketers and tax evaders.
Era’s Budget: Manmohan Singh’s landmark 1991 budget under the PV Narasimha Rao government, which ended the license raj and ushered in an era of economic liberalization, is known as the ‘Era Budget’. Introduced at a time when India was on the verge of economic collapse, it among other things reduced customs duties from 220 per cent to 150 per cent and took steps to boost exports.
Dream Budget: In the 1997-98 budget, P Chidambaram used the Laffer Curve principle to reduce tax rates to increase collections. He lowered the maximum marginal income tax rate from 40 per cent to 30 per cent for individuals and 35 per cent for domestic companies, besides introducing several major tax reforms including the voluntary disclosure of income scheme to recover black money. Referred to as the ‘Dream Budget’, it reduced customs duty to 40 per cent and simplified the excise duty structure.
Millennium Budget: Yashwant Sinha’s Millennium Budget in 2000 set the road map for the development of India’s information technology (IT) industry as it eliminated incentives on software exporters and reduced customs duties on 21 items such as computers and computer accessories.
Rollback Budget: Yashwant Sinha’s 2002–03 budget for the Atal Bihari Vajpayee-led NDA government is popularly remembered as the rollback budget because it had several proposals rolled back or withdrawn.
Once a century budget: Nirmala Sitharaman on February 1, 2021 presented what she called the ‘one-time budget’ as it was Asia’s third largest through investment in infrastructure and healthcare, relying on an aggressive privatization strategy and strong tax collections. The big economy was seen to be revived.
Read also: As a seller of FIIs, the market is expected to remain volatile in the coming Budget 2022
,