The Union Budget is one of the most crucial days in the Indian calendar. On that one afternoon that heralds the advent of spring, the financial health of the country, its growth rate, future projections and investment climate is kept on the table, a copious piece of public document which concerns the economic well being not just of a group of people or a community but the country at large.
Important as Union Budgets have always been, the last two decades of globalisation have added to the growing significance of India’s capital markets and with each passing year, budget proposals are received eagerly by India’s burgeoning market leaders and multinational companies in the fond hope that their sectoral aspirations are going to be met.
Yet for a vast majority of Indians, most budget proposals which are one of the most mammoth exercises of economic stock taking anywhere in the world, the number crunching and economic jargon does not make great sense out of the immediate circle of stakeholders, professionals, traders and business honchos.
For instance, a growth in exports may not tell the common man how exactly it is going to impact his or her life. Neither will the story of agriculture surplus or the baffling chart of tax exemptions explain how the country’s biggest economic draft is going to change common lives.
It is keeping this in view that Governance Watch is taking perhaps the most comprehensive look at the Indian Budget ever undertaken. It explains in a language which everyone understands the importance of the Union Budget, its implications and the subtle nuances that go into its making.
An imminently readable new element is the historic role of successive Union finance ministers and the major policy initiatives taken during their budget speech: there have been finance ministers who have presented as many as half-a-dozen budgets. Some of their presentations have great archival value and narrate in a significant way India’s growth story from a license permit raj regime in the 1950s to a free flowing global economic powerhouse at the turn of the millennium, despite teeming poverty and many other problems.
Away from the nitty gritty and of great significance is the history of the Indian budgets since Independence, the economists who put into place India’s planning cycle, men who displayed uncommon vision in shaping the country’s economic future, which despite the warts and all that, has managed to become the second largest economy in the world, keeping in view that strictly democratic methods were used in trying to attain goals.
The cover package of this latest issue looks at the role of lobbies which influence the budget making exercise: highly organised industry bodies who have a big stake and therefore try their level best to influence the finance minister into granting this or that concession; agricultural interests who press for loan waivers, better farm inputs and other freebies and the mass of common people who find their representatives in a plethora of citizens’ associations. The thrust and parry which goes into making of the budget are no less than a thriller and are worthy of being recorded. That is precisely what the current issue does.
There is the conventional wisdom that any serious yet simple understanding of the Indian budget is possible only in some top notch global economic publications.
Instead of just vomiting out numbers, facts, figures and bland statements, some global publications are able to give out the big picture story which is understood easily. This view is not entirely inaccurate either.
It doubly makes sense therefore to completely deconstruct the budget so that every facet is laid out in the simplest possible narrative.
Hopefully, the readers will get a bird eyes’ view of what is possibly the most significant document in the country, referred to under the unassuming nomenclature of the Annual Financial Statement under Article 112 of the Constitution of India. A country with a near 8 per cent growth rate is entitled to such clarity.
Important as Union Budgets have always been, the last two decades of globalisation have added to the growing significance of India’s capital markets and with each passing year, budget proposals are received eagerly by India’s burgeoning market leaders and multinational companies in the fond hope that their sectoral aspirations are going to be met.
Yet for a vast majority of Indians, most budget proposals which are one of the most mammoth exercises of economic stock taking anywhere in the world, the number crunching and economic jargon does not make great sense out of the immediate circle of stakeholders, professionals, traders and business honchos.
For instance, a growth in exports may not tell the common man how exactly it is going to impact his or her life. Neither will the story of agriculture surplus or the baffling chart of tax exemptions explain how the country’s biggest economic draft is going to change common lives.
It is keeping this in view that Governance Watch is taking perhaps the most comprehensive look at the Indian Budget ever undertaken. It explains in a language which everyone understands the importance of the Union Budget, its implications and the subtle nuances that go into its making.
An imminently readable new element is the historic role of successive Union finance ministers and the major policy initiatives taken during their budget speech: there have been finance ministers who have presented as many as half-a-dozen budgets. Some of their presentations have great archival value and narrate in a significant way India’s growth story from a license permit raj regime in the 1950s to a free flowing global economic powerhouse at the turn of the millennium, despite teeming poverty and many other problems.
Away from the nitty gritty and of great significance is the history of the Indian budgets since Independence, the economists who put into place India’s planning cycle, men who displayed uncommon vision in shaping the country’s economic future, which despite the warts and all that, has managed to become the second largest economy in the world, keeping in view that strictly democratic methods were used in trying to attain goals.
The cover package of this latest issue looks at the role of lobbies which influence the budget making exercise: highly organised industry bodies who have a big stake and therefore try their level best to influence the finance minister into granting this or that concession; agricultural interests who press for loan waivers, better farm inputs and other freebies and the mass of common people who find their representatives in a plethora of citizens’ associations. The thrust and parry which goes into making of the budget are no less than a thriller and are worthy of being recorded. That is precisely what the current issue does.
There is the conventional wisdom that any serious yet simple understanding of the Indian budget is possible only in some top notch global economic publications.
Instead of just vomiting out numbers, facts, figures and bland statements, some global publications are able to give out the big picture story which is understood easily. This view is not entirely inaccurate either.
It doubly makes sense therefore to completely deconstruct the budget so that every facet is laid out in the simplest possible narrative.
Hopefully, the readers will get a bird eyes’ view of what is possibly the most significant document in the country, referred to under the unassuming nomenclature of the Annual Financial Statement under Article 112 of the Constitution of India. A country with a near 8 per cent growth rate is entitled to such clarity.
