​Viral: 7 Interesting facts about Indian Budget

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman is all set to present the Union Budget on July 23,2024. Forget about '400 paar' , the Modi 3.0 is a coalition government. It failed to cross the minimum number of 270 to make a government on its own, and hence relied on the partners Nitish Kumar's JDU and Chandrababu Naidu. BJP needs to tread carefully in these shaky waters of coalition and it will be interesting to see will it have an effect on the 2024 Budget.

Nirmala Sitharaman, while presenting the budget for 2020-21, spoke for 2 hours 42 minutes. She broke her own record set in July 2019, when she spoke for 2 hours 17 minutes. While in terms of number of words, Dr Manmohan Singh had the longest speech ever. It was in 1991 that Dr Singh had a speech which was 18,650 words long.
The shortest speech in history, on the other hand, was presented by Hirubhai Mulljibhai Patel in 1977. He spoke a mere 800 words. Patel was the finance minister in the government of Morarji Desai.

In the year 1955, the then Finance Minister CD Deshmukh, recognised the need for making the budget document accessible and inclusive to all citizens of India. He got the budget printed in both English and Hindi.

The word ‘budget’ has been derived from a French word called ‘bougette’. This word means leather briefcase. And that is why we saw all Finance Ministers of India carrying their documents, on the day of budget announcement, in a leather briefcase. Indians had inherited this from the British. Interestingly, since 2019 this leather briefcase has been replaced by a ‘bahi khata’ for carrying the budget documents.

As per traditions, the Finance Minister hosts a ‘Halwa’ ceremony in the basement of the Finance Ministry(North Block), a place specially designed for printing the budget. This ceremony is a celebration of the hard work by the members who helped in the preparation of the budget. This ceremony takes place 9-10 days before the budget is presented, thus it marks the ‘lock in’ for the staff and members who are isolated from the rest of the world, until the Budget Day. It is to ensure that there are no leaks.

The budget of 1991, presented by former PM and then FM Dr Manmohan Singh, was one of the most significant budgets. The budget ended the ‘license raj’ and ushered in an era of economic liberalization. India’s growth before this step was limited to 3.5% per year. In his budget speech in July,1991 Dr Singh said, “Let the whole world hear it loud and clear. India is now wide awake. We shall prevail. We shall overcome"

Morarji Desai holds the record for presenting the budget for the most number of times. He has presented it for a total of 10 times. Second on the list is P Chidambram, who has presented the budget 9 times. The current FM, Nirmala Sitharaman, is only the second woman who has ever led the Finance Ministry. Before her only Indira Gandhi had presented the budget.

It was in 2001, 54 years after the Independence of India, that FM Yashwant Sinha changed the time of the budget presentation from 5 PM to 11 AM. Now the British used to present the budget at 5 PM, for the convenience of British officials sitting in Britain to coordinate better with their officers in India. India is 5 hours 30 minutes ahead of the UK, so 5 PM in India was 11:30 AM in the morning for the UK. Further, in a momentous move, the then FM Arun Jaitely in 2017, stopped the tradition of presenting the Railway and Union budget separately.