10 centrespread centrespread 11 JANUARY 31-FEBRUARY 06, 2021 JANUARY 31-FEBRUARY 06, 2021 RHYME & REASON Finance ministers have often turned to poetry during PRIME NUMBERS budget presentation. A few examples: 5 PM FM , , Till 2000, the budget was in Budget 2020-21: in Budget 2015-16 presented at 5 pm, a British legacy. This was to accommodate the time “Saun watan gulzar Shalamaar hyur “Kuch to phool khilaye difference between and Dal manz pholvun pamposh hyuv humne, aur kuch phool khilane hai Britain. These days, it’s Navjavan-an-hund, vushun khumaar presented at 11 am. hyuv Mushkil yeh hai bag me Myon watan, chyon watan ab tak, kaante kai purane hai” Saun watan, nundbony watan” BUDGET (We have grown some (“Our country is like a blooming flowers and have to grow 10 Shalimar Bagh, many more. our country is like the lotus But we are facing The number of budgets blooming in the Dal Lake; difficulty with thorns of presented, the most it is like the boiling blood of the legacies) by a finance minister. He is also the youth, only FM to have presented the BITES my country, your budget on his birthday, February 29, twice. country, our country, the world’s most beloved P Chidambaram, 160 minutes country”) in Budget 2013-14 The duration of —Kashmiri poet Pandit Dinanath Kaul Nirmala Sitharaman’s budget speech in 2020, considered the “Kalangathu kanda longest in independent India. vinaikkan She still had a couple of pages Beyond the hard numbers, taxes and landmark proposals, Thulangkathu thookkang left when she began feeling kadinthu seyal” unwell and had to stop. Union budgets have also been an occasion for finance (What clearly the eye ministers to quote favourite poets, set records, discard discerns as right, with traditions and create new ones. ET Magazine takes a look steadfast will `171.15 crore And mind unslumbering, at some of the quirky and unconventional aspects of the that should man fulfil) The revenue in the first budget budget — in facts, figures, firsts and in verse in independent India, —Tamil saint and poet Tiruvalluvar presented in November 1947 :: Indulekha Aravind & Shantanu Nandan Sharma by finance minister RK Shanmukham Chetty. Expenditure was `197.39 crore, due to expenses related to COVID CHANGES the rehabilitation of Partition refugees. The budget press, situated in North Block’s basement, will A Union Budget mobile app has been developed, remain idle for the first time since Independence as the where budget document will be made available to budget papers will not be printed this year due to Covid members of Parliament and the public. FUN FACTS

The First Budget The Budget Briefcase The Blue Sheet The Basement The Black Budget The first Union budget of India Abandoned in favour of the more The starting point of the Budget documents used to be The 1973-74 budget was was presented on February 18, local “bahi khata” (ledger) by Union budget is a blue printed at Rashtrapati Bhavan presented during severe 1860, by Scotsman James Nirmala Sitharaman in 2019, the sheet of paper with key till there was a leak in 1950. The economic stress, coming in the Wilson, finance member of the briefcase used to be an integral numbers, considered the following year, printing was wake of a failed monsoon and Viceroy’s Executive Council of part of Budget Day. It was a blueprint of the budget. shifted to a press on Minto the 1971 Bangladesh war. It was India. Incidentally, he was also tradition inherited from the UK, The blue sheet is top secret Road and then to the basement termed the Black Budget for the founder of The Economist as where it was started by budget and is in the sole custody of North Block, which then deficit of `550 crore it showed well as of the Chartered Bank, chief William Gladstone, whose of the joint secretary became the permanent venue and the plan to nationalise which went on to merge with the speeches were so long that a (budget). for the printing press of general insurance companies Standard Bank in 1969. briefcase was needed to budget papers. and coal mines. accommodate all his papers. Source: Ministry of Finance, media reports