Do it yourself

  Prologue: If you find these observations completely trivial, that is precisely the idea. The budget speech and most of the promises made thereunder sound trivial, lacking specifics. As expected, the budget speech of the finance minister, while presenting the last full budget of the union government before the next general election, sounded like an election manifesto. The finance minister counted the achievements made in the past nine years (since 2014) of her party’s government; and made many promises for the future, totally lacking on specifics. Perhaps for the first time in the history of independent India, the finance minister used “We will” and “will be” to make all the budget proposals. The general convention has been to say “I propose to” or “is proposed”. Besides, the nomenclatures of an overwhelming number of central sector schemes now use “PM” as prefix. It is obvious that the central government is too conscious to ensure that the electorate must know that the benef...

Honb’le Minister, In the Dvapara Yuga, an epic war was fought between the forces of righteousness (Pandava) and unscrupulousness (Kaurava) , popularly known as the War of Mahabharata. In the 18 days long war, many important battles were fought. In one such battle on the 13 th day of the war, brave Pandav Prince Abhimanyu, son of Arjuna, was killed by the top Kaurav generals. Jayadratha, the king of Sindhu State, and son-in-law of Kaurav king Dthrutrashtra, played the most critical role in this battle. Jayadratha had a boon from Lord Shiva that for one day in a great war he will be able to check the advance of the entire opponent army, except Arjuna. In this particular battle in Mahabharata war, he used that boon to stop the entire Pandava army from helping Abhimanyu, who was ambushed by senior Kaurava generals and killed. Arjuna was tactfully distracted from the main battlefield. The next day, Arjuna avenged the death of his son, by beheading Jayadratha. The point in narrating t...

  As per media reports, the finance ministry officials shall start exercise for preparation of Union Budget for FY22 from 16 October 2020. The exercise usually starts with the finance ministry official and the finance minister meeting with various stakeholders, especially the business representatives; representatives of professional bodies like ICAI; officials from other administrative ministries; officials from state finance ministries; and policy making and statistical bodies etc. The suggestions made in these meetings are then considered in the preparation of final draft the budget documents. Budget making is normally a very complex exercise that requires special skills to strike an optimum balance between the expectations of various stakeholders. These expectations are invariable at odds with each other. Therefore pleasing most of the stakeholders is almost an impossible task. In past many finance ministers have used some Big Bang announcement to overwhelm the stakeholders so...