Budget Trivia

"Budget" is the hot word for the day. With markets on a roller coster ride today(600+ points down in the morning!!!) and everybody glued to either their television sets or the websites, here are some budget trivia which I managed to collect from the net.

The word Budget is derived from? According to the Webster dictionary the word Budget was derived from the Middle English bowgette, which came from Middle French bougette, which in turn is a diminutive of bouge, meaning a leather bag.

At what time were Indian Budgets presented earlier? Earlier, Budgets were presented at 5 p.m. from 1924-1998. The timing was initially fixed keeping in mind the convenience of the House of Commons in London, which convened round that time. Yashwant Sinha, shifted the Budget speech to noon in 1999.

The Budget process has its roots in the Bombay Plan of 1944. Bombay Plan was authored by John Mathai, GD Birla & JRD Tata.

Initially, budget papers were printed in Rashtrapati Bhavan In 1950, budget papers were leaked. This changed the printing venue to Minto Road located security press Since 1980, budget papers are being printed in the press at North Block. The finance ministry has its own press in the basement of the building. It employs 30 employees who, during the week before the Budget, stay in the ministry itself and have no means of communicating with the outside world.

On November 26, 1947 R.K. Shanmukham Chetty had presented the first budget of Independent India. But actually it was a review of the economy and no new taxes were proposed as the budget day for 1948-49 was just 95 days away. In an explanation he had said that the budget for April 1946 to March 1947 was adopted by the then interim Government in March 1946. But that budget was for undivided India and as the budget for 1947-48 passed by the legislature had ceased to be operative with the division of the country it was felt that it would be in accordance with the public wish if a budget be placed before the representatives of the people at the earliest possible moment. Chetty began his budget speech for 1948-49 saying "when I presented my interim budget for free India’s Parliament a few months back…" From then onwards an interim budget began to mean a budget for a short period. Chetty resigned a few days later due to differences with Prime Minister Nehru.

How many Indian FMs went on to become PM? Four.
- Morarji Desai, was twice the finance minister of India -- 1959-64 and 1967-70. He served as
the prime minister from 1977 to 1979.
- Chaudhary Charan Singh became the prime minister in late 1979, having held the finance
portfolio earlier the same year.
- V P Singh was finance minister from 1985 to 1987 and prime minister from 1989 to 1990.
- India's first prime minister (1947-64) Pt. Jawaharlal Nehru had also held the finance portfolio
from 1958 to 1959.
- Indira Gandhi too held the finance portfolio from 1970 to 1971 while she was still the prime
minister. Her tenure as PM was from 1966 to1977 and again from 1980 to 1984. So far, she
has been the only woman Finance Minister
- India's new prime minister Manmohan Singh also was the finance minister in the PV
Narasimha Rao government.

Morarji Desai was the only Finance Minister to have had the opportunity to present two budgets on his birthday – in 1964 and 1968. He was born on February 29. Desai resigned in July 1969 in protest against the nationalization of major banks by an ordinance on a Saturday evening. He felt social control of banks was enough.

Pranab Mukherjee presented the annual budgets for 1982-83, 1983-84 and 1984-85. He was the first Rajya Sabha member to hold the Finance portfolio

Yashwant Sinha became the Finance Minister in 1991 and presented the interim budget for 1991-92. In the election held in May 1991, the Congress returned to power and Manmohan Singh became the Finance Minister. He presented the final budget for 1991-92 in July 1991. This was the first occasion when the interim and final budgets were presented by two ministers of two different political parties.