It’s Budget Day 2022 and all eyes on what relief the Narendra Modi government plans to provide to the common man in the third year of the covid-19 pandemic. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s Union Budget 2022 is also being keenly watched in five poll-bound states of Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Uttarakhand, Goa and Manipur.
While the Budget 2022 presentation will begin at 11am in Parliament, Nirmala Sitharaman and her team will pose for a photo-op outside North Block before leaving for the Rashtrapati Bhavan. In the years past, Nirmala Sitharaman broke with tradition to first ditch the Budget briefcase for a traditional ‘Bahi Khata’ and last year opted for a ‘Made-in-India’ iPad.
Just like the ‘Bahi Khata’ the year before, the iPad, wrapped in a red case bearing the emblem of the Government of India, grabbed headlines. Here’s a look at the transition from the Budget briefcase to the ‘Bahi Khata’ to the iPad:
The Budget Briefcase
On Budget Day, the Union Finance Minister poses with the Budget bag before heading to Parliament. Independent India’s first finance minister RK Shanmukham Chetty had carried a leather portfolio to present the first Budget in 1947.
In fact, the word ‘Budget’ originated from the French word Bougette, which means leather briefcase.
The tradition of carrying the Budget briefcase was handed over to India by the British. In Britain, the Chancellor of the Exchequer (equivalent to the portfolio of the Finance Minister) poses with his suitcase in front of 11, Downing Street before the Budget speech.
India’s Budget briefcase was a copy of the ‘Gladstone box’ that is used in the British budget. In 1860, the then British budget chief William E Gladstone used a red suitcase with the Queen’s monogram embossed in gold to carry his bundle of papers. It came to be known as ‘Gladstone Box’.
In Britain, one Budget briefcase is passed on from a finance minister to another, whereas in India, different FMs used to carry different briefcases. The original Gladstone bag had become so shabby that it was officially retired from British service in 2010.
The budget briefcase came into being because Gladstone’s speeches were extraordinarily long and he needed a briefcase to carry his speech papers.
Indian finance ministers started carrying a hardbound briefcase from 1970 to 2019. Unlike Britain, its shape and colors used to vary.
The Bahi Khata and iPad
In 2019, Sitharaman ditched the colonial legacy of a Budget briefcase for a ‘Bahi Khata’ to carry Union Budget papers. As her move attracted buzz, she launched a veiled attack on the Congress, saying: “For Budget 2019, I did not carry a suitcase. We are not a suitcase-carrying government. A suitcase also denotes something else: suitcase-taking, suitcase-giving. Modi ji’s government is not a suitcase government.”
The ‘Bahi Khata’ reappeared in 2020 before being replaced by a ‘Made in India’ iPad.
Another old budget tradition was broken during the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government when the then Finance Minister, Yashwant Sinha, presented the budget at 11am instead of 5pm. Since then, governments have maintained the schedule of 11 am for presentation of budget.
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