Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will present her fifth Union budget on Wednesday (February 1). She set the record for the longest budget speech when she presented the 2020-21 Union budget on 1 February 2020. After speaking for 2 hours and 42 minutes straight, she had to interrupt her speech because she felt unwell – with two pages to go! The total length of the text was 13,275 words. She asked the Speaker to consider the remainder of the speech read.
On that day she broke her own record. Before that, the longest budget speech by an Indian Finn Min was on July 5, 2019, again by Sitharaman – in fact her first budget speech – when it lasted 2 hours 17 minutes. The 2021 budget, when the government went paperless for the first time when presenting the Union budget and replaced the ‘bahi katha’ with a tablet, Nirmala Sitharaman gave her shortest budget speech – 1 hour and 40 minutes (10,500 words).
Before Sitharaman’s feat in 2019, the longest budget speech record was held by Jaswant Singh at two hours and 15 minutes in 2003.
In terms of speech text word limit, Manmohan Singh created the record in 1991 under Narasimha Rao’s government when he presented the momentous budget that changed the face of Indian economy. The speech had 18,650 words. While Dr Singh’s record is unbeaten, in late 2018 former finance minister Arun Jaitley’s budget speech came pretty close – 18,604 words delivered in 1 hour 49 minutes. Jaitley’s speeches also hold the record at third, fourth, and fifth for the longest Budget speeches. 18,122 words in 2015, 17,991 words in 2018 and 16,528 words at the presentation of the Union’s budget in 2014 — third, fourth and fifth respectively.
Although these are the longest speeches in terms of time and content, did you know who gave the shortest Budget speech?
In 1977, former finance minister Hirubhai Muljibhai Patel presented the country’s smallest budget. That was the interim budget. It was introduced on March 28, 1977. That year’s budget speech was 800 words.
Some of the most iconic budget speeches are –
Carrot & Stick Budget: The Union budget presented before the Congress government by VP Singh on February 28, 1986 was the first step towards the dismantling of license raj in India. It was dubbed the ‘carrot and stick’ budget because it offered both rewards and punishments. It introduced MODVAT (Modified Value Added Tax) credit for reducing the cascading effect of taxes paid by consumers, while also launching an intense battle against smugglers, black marketers and tax evaders.
Epochal Budget: Manmohan Singh’s milestone budget for 1991 under PV Narasimha Rao government which ended the license raj and started the era of economic liberalization is known as ‘Epochal Budget’. Presented at a time when India was on the brink of economic collapse, it cut customs duties from 220 percent to 150 percent and took steps to boost exports, among other things.
Dream Budget: P Chidambaram in 1997-98 budget used the Laffer Curve principle to reduce tax rates to increase collections. He lowered the maximum marginal income tax rate for individuals from 40 percent to 30 percent and that for domestic businesses to 35 percent, in addition to a number of major tax reforms, including voluntary disclosure of income schemes to recover black money. Dubbed the “Dream Budget,” it also cut customs duties to 40 percent and simplified the excise tax structure.
Millennium Budget: Yashwant Sinha’s Millennium Budget in 2000 set the roadmap for the growth of India’s information technology (IT) industry as incentives for software exporters were phased out and customs duties on 21 items, such as the computer and computer accessories, were reduced.
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