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WHEN FINANCE Minister Nirmala Sitharaman stands up to present her sixth Union Budget — the one for the forthcoming financial year (2024-25) — it is quite likely that most of her speech will focus on the achievements of her five Budgets or indeed of the previous 10 that have been presented under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. That’s because this Budget is going to be an interim one — a Vote-on-Account — to enable the government to discharge its duties and to meet all essential expenditure until a new government takes charge after the general election.
‘Annadata’ (or the farmer) wins this contest hands down. It is most likely to feature in the speech since it is one of the only four “castes” the PM said he recognises. The government had promised that India would witness the doubling of farmers income between 2016 and 2022. Maybe the Budget can shine some light on that.
There are some other worthy contenders under ‘A’. For instance, ‘aspirational’. India is overrun by aspirations — from people to districts. Then there are the Agniveers, who walk on Agnipath. There’s the PM’s Awas Yojana as well.
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Few understand the political significance of using the word ‘benefit’ to describe all manners of economic welfare schemes.
Think for a moment: How would the tens of millions of needy feel if the government called its help to them charity, dole, assistance, welfare or freebies? It is disempowering.
What if the government called it their “entitlement”? This would be a huge improvement but it runs the risk of people getting the idea that the government’s primary job is to assist the needy and that it has no choice in the matter.
So what would be great word to describe welfare in a manner that it:
a. doesn’t hurt their sentiments and morale, and
b. leaves the welfare as a discretionary power with the government?
Benefit is that word. To make it even more emphatic, it can get the prefix “direct”. Adding “transfer” as a suffix lends an almost tangible sense of action. In reality, such benefits refer to anything from cash to rice to toilets.
That the Indian economy is on the cusp of take-off is quite likely to be mentioned. The government claims the Indian economy, which was fast losing its growth momentum going into the Covid pandemic, has shaken off both structural and cyclical factors coming out of it. Speaking of cusps, it is unclear if India is also on the cusp of a new Census.
There are quite a few phrases starting with D that can figure in the speech. After all, apart from being the “mother of Democracy“, India is now also the father of Demography. But it is Development that is the front-runner to feature in the speech. The lack of credible data in certain areas that affect policy-making is unlikely to find a mention.
Education would be the most obvious choice for a young population but the findings of the latest Annual Status of Education Report are too close for comfort.
Employment could, but the details in the latest (official) Periodic Labour Force Survey aren’t too encouraging. For instance, the jobs getting created are of poor quality and in segments where wages have been stagnant for long periods.
While any government will always project data that looks good, the front-runner is Empowered, because it is more about how a person feels, a state of mind.
Fiscal Deficit has to be the winner here. If the FM can only speak one sentence, then it must be about the Fiscal Deficit. However, with the NDA government not meeting the prudential norm of fiscal deficit being 3% of the GDP, and given that the target for the current year is 5.9%, chances are other words starting with F may gain currency. Such as Forex (India has hundreds of millions in dollars) or Finance Commission (India has just got a new one) or Foreign investments.
This is another of the four castes outlined by the PM and as such looks certain to be mentioned in the speech. The other words under G that are very likely to get mentioned in the same breath are GDP growth, G-20, Global Innovation Index (one of those rare international indices that the Indian government agrees with), Gift City, GST, Gau Mata and Good Governance. What may get a miss is the Ganga or Namami Gange mission.
The government disagrees with the so-called global hunger rankings. The government provides free food to 800 million Indians — that’s the total population of the US, Indonesia and Pakistan combined. Does this mean that no one can go hungry or does it mean, as the Opposition alleges, that there is hunger and this policy is a tacit acceptance of it ? Take your pick, but it is unlikely that hunger will figure prominently.
There may be a mention of the ‘Hindutva Rate of Growth‘, which the government says has overtaken the ‘Hindu rate of growth’. Healthcare, though, is a natural choice under H.
Too many eligible words here. Inequality, Inflation, Infrastructure, a simplified Income Tax structure. But what stands out is ISRO’s singular achievement.
The original favourite is the famed JAM trinity — Jan-Dhan, Aadhaar and Mobile — that undergirds the digital revolution taking place in India. There is also the Pradhan Mantri Jeevan Jyoti Bima Yojana — a scheme that provides term life cover of Rs 2 lakh to subscribers for an annual premium of just Rs 436. But the dark horse is a call for a new mass movement or a Jan Andolan to achieve some new goal.
K must be the most irritating letter for those in the government. As the economy came out of the Covid pandemic there was this all-mighty tussle between the government and its critics on the shape of the recovery. The government saw a “V” while the critics saw an “L”. The end result: a “K-shaped” recovery, suggesting those who were well-off before the pandemic recovered fast while the rest continue to struggle.
There was a time where reams upon reams were written about how a genuine conservative leader in the mould of Thatcher and Reagan will bring about long-pending labour reforms and fundamentally alter the land acquisition legislation. A decade since, the main reason for the BJP’s relentless election march is the growth of the Labharthi (beneficiary) class. From Ujjwala to PM Aawas Yojana, from health insurance to free ration, the labharthi has emerged as a new voting bloc.
Make in India, Manufacturing boom, Monetising unused government assets, Mudra loans for India’s small and micro enterprises, tax cuts for the middle class, increasing MSPs and turning them into a credible safety net for Indian farmers. There are too many contenders under M. The one that backs all these claims? Modi ki guarantee.
This is the third of the four castes that the PM recognises and as such nari-shakti is a phrase most likely to feature in the Budget. The Nari Shakti Vandan Act has already taken the first step towards increasing the participation of women in India’s Parliament, though there are, of course, many more steps that are needed to actually achieve the goal. There is also the PM’s mantra of “nation-first”. Not to forget the Nal se jal initiative or the focus on the right niti (policy) and niyat (intention).
In October 2019, the country answered the PM’s call and declared itself open defecation free. But that wasn’t the end of the business. The bar was raised for the country to be declared ODF+. This required that at no point during the day should anyone be found defecating and/or urinating in the open, and all community and public toilets should be functional and well maintained. By September 2023, 75% villages were ODF+ compliant. The next target is ODF++, which requires a place to treat all sewage properly.
A country’s slogans often best capture how it has progressed and where it stands. The Budget is likely to remind citizens of the Panch Pran (five resolutions) outlined by the PM last year — working for a developed India, shedding the mentality of slavery, being proud of our traditions, dedicating lives towards India’s unity, and awakening a sense of duty. Two decades ago, Jaswant Singh (also of the BJP) had in his Interim Budget of 2004 outlined the government’s “Panch Priorities”: enhanced employment and eradication of poverty; a second green revolution; infrastructure development; fiscal consolidation; and greater manufacturing sector efficiency.
Since the first QR code was introduced in India in 2016, reportedly 50 million more QR codes have been designed. The government may use this to talk about the pace of technological transformation under its watch.
Budgets are written in a set language. For instance, revenues are always ‘mobilised’ and duty structures are always ‘rationalised‘. Roads, rozgar melas and rotis are in contention, but it seems only two things deserve the reader’s attention: Ram and railway stocks.
This letter has many words that may figure in the speech: Shreshta Bharat, soft-power, Shramev Jayate, smart cities, Skill India, Start-up India…the list is long. But it is the slogans one has to watch out for. Just like Atmanirbhar Bharat was in 2021, the new Budget, especially with the election round the corner, may provide a new tagline
As things stand, India is set to become the world’s third-largest economy by 2027. India wants to become a developed country by 2047. This goal has led to different people providing different estimates of India’s future GDP. The numbers can be mind-boggling. Would India’s GDP be $35 to $40 trillion by 2047? In a world where it is hard enough to get any consensus on the GDP growth rate in the next 12 months, such lofty numbers are at best of limited use. Perhaps the current FM will be able to give a more concrete number.
One of the key promises of this government has been to reduce the unorganised sector — both in terms of its contribution to the economy and the number of people it employs — and expand the scope of the organised sector. Expect some clarity on how successful the government has been on this count. There is likely to be a round of applause for the role of UPI and how it has allowed India to leapfrog over many developed countries. Then there are unicorns — not the ones with horns but start-ups with a billion dollar valuation — although both can just as easily disappear. Ask Byju’s. But the most important issue will be urbanisation.
Vande Bharat is likely to be pipped to the post by Viksit Bharat because it is a train that needs to run in the physical universe we inhabit while the latter is an idea. The goal of becoming a developed country — Viksit Bharat — is now the central target for the next 25 years. Expect to hear more on how India might want to achieve this. There will be a mention of India’s leading role in the global distribution of vaccines.
India experiences an odd conundrum — there is a lot of wealth creation but the average person’s wages are stagnant. This happens because most of the wealth generation accrues to a small number of people while a large number of workers survive on with constantly falling purchasing power. The more the government spends on welfare, the less it has to invest towards wealth creation and vice-versa.
There are two emerging concerns for India. One is the performance of its exports. With the global growth slowing down, India will have to work doubly hard to gain or sometimes even retain its level of exports. The second issue is that of the rupee’s exchange rate with the other hard currencies such as the US dollar. Weakening exchange rates help exporters but also create a political problem since the optics are poor.
This is the fourth of the GYAN castes that the PM talked about. To a great extent, the youth population is a huge reason why so many observers across the world are upbeat about the prospects of the Indian economy. But youth alone will not help. Pakistan’s median age is less than 21 years — seven years lower than India’s— and yet it struggles to be taken seriously, mired as it is in religious intolerance and institutional decay.
Zero-budget farming is a perennial favourite of Budget makers. Zero waste and zero emissions are also gaining popularity as is zero-sum game.
The first Indian Budget was presented in 1860 by Scottish economist James Wilson.
The first Budget in independent India was presented on November 26, 1947, by Finance Minister R K Shanmukham Chetty. It was just an overview of India’s economy.
Statistician Prof P C Mahalanobis, who was on the Planning Commission of India, was influential in designing independent India’s Budget
Jawaharlal Nehru was the first PM to present the Budget in 1958 (after Finance Minister T T Krishnamachari resigned), followed by PM Indira Gandhi in 1970 (after Finance Minister Morarji Desai resigned) and PM Rajiv Gandhi in 1987-88 (after Finance Minister V P Singh resigned).
Morarji Desai has presented the most Budgets (10), followed by P Chidambaram (9) and Pranab Mukherjee (8).
A few days before the Budget is presented, the Finance Minister stirs a large pan of halwa.
After the halwa is served, the staff directly associated with preparing the document stays “locked-in” at North Block till the Finance Minister gives the Budget speech in Lok Sabha.
The lock-in period has become shorter since the government moved to paperless Budgets from 2021.
Till 2018, Finance Ministers carried Budget papers to Parliament in a briefcase, a British-era tradition.
In 2019, Nirmala Sitharaman brought the documents in a red cloth tied with a string called bahi khatha, with the national emblem emblazoned on it
