Union Budget

Finance Minister Ms. Nirmala Sitharaman will present the Union Budget for FY 2022-23 in Parliament today. It will be her straight fourth budget.

The practice of presenting budget for India began way back in 1860, when Scottish businessman, economist and politician James Wilson, then the Finance Member of the Viceroy’s Executive Council presented the first budget of India to the British Crown.

James Wilson, better known at that time as the founder of the The Economist news magazine, was sent to India to find solution to India’s financial crisis in the aftermath of the 1857 First War of Independence.

Although, his budget did not win any universal praise, he did lay the groundwork for government accounting system, establishment of pay office,  audit structure etc, upon which several economic institutions in India are still functioning.

Post Independence

The first budget of Independent India was presented on November 26, 1947 by the then Finance Minister R K Shanmukham Chetty.  It was a budget meant for a seven month period, entailing a total expenditure of Rs 197.39 crores.

C D Deshmukh, who was the Finance Minister during 1950-56 is credited with giving a definitive shape to the Union Budget as an important fiscal policy instrument.

Former Prime Minister Morarji Desai holds the record of presenting the most number of budgets in the history of the country. He had presented 10 budgets, including two interim budgets during his stint as Finance Minister between 1962 -69.

Till now three Prime Ministers have presented the Union Budget. Jawaharlal Nehru in 1958, Indira Gandhi in 1970 and Rajiv Gandhi in 1987, presented the Union Budgets, as their respective Finance Ministers – T T Krishnamachari, Morarji Desai and V P Singh had quit owing to some reason or the other.

Some of the budgets over the years have come to be regarded as landmark budgets. 

V P Singh’s 1986-87 budget, which introduced the Modified Value Added Tax (MODVAT), Dr. Manmohan Singh’s 1991-92 budget which ended the license raj and heralded the era of liberalization, P Chidambaram’s 1997-98 Budget which attempted bold reduction of direct and indirect taxes and Yashwant Sinha’s Millennium Budget, which laid the road map for India’s IT industry’s growth and Ms. Nirmala Sitharaman’s previous year’s budget for its infrastructure push are counted among iconic Union Budgets of India.

Break from the past

Over the years, several changes have also taken place in relation to the presentation of the Union Budget. Since colonial days, the Union Budget was presented on the last working day of February at 5 p.m., a time that suited London, more than India.  Yashwant Sinha changed the time of the budget presentation to 11 a.m. in 1999.

Arun Jaitley in 2017, moved the date of budget presentation to the 1st of February, instead of the last day of the month.  2017 was also the year, when the Railway Budget, which was presented separately till then, was merged into the Union Budget.

The presentation of the Union Budget at 11 a.m. today and the Finance Minister’s Post-Budget Press Conference at 3.45 p.m. will be live streamed on PIB India YouTube channel.  Do log in to know what’s in store. 

PC : PIB Photos, CNBC, WikiCommons

MD / BPost XIV