Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will be presenting the first Union Budget of the decade today. Earlier, she had promised a “never like before” Union Budget as the government looks to steer the pandemic-battered economy and push growth.
While investment in health, medical Research & Development (R&D) and developing greater skills to handle telemedicine is going to be critical, livelihood challenges would have to be seen with a newer perspective.
As we all know, Indian Budget is the largest budget in the world and it is prepared by the concerned department of economic affairs of the Ministry of Finance on an annual basis.
Here are some lesser-known facts about the Union Budget 2021:
- Morarji Desai has presented 10 Union Budgets in Parliament –The highest by a single finance minister followed by P Chidambaram with nine budgets
- The word BUDGET comes from ‘bougette’ and it means a small bag in French.
- In 1860, the first-ever Indian budget was presented by James Wilson, a Scottish economist and politician.
- On November 26, 1947, RK Shanmukhan Chetty presented the first independent budget of India.
- Till 2017, Union and Railway Budget were presented separately and then they merged into a single presentation.
- Until 2000, the budget was presented at 5 pm on the last working day of February, however, in 2001, the then Former Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha changed it to 11 am.
- Arun Jaitley in 2014 delivered the longest budget speech – 2.5 hours.
- Sitharaman ditched the traditional Budget briefcase in 2019 and carried a Red packet with the National Emblem wrapped with a ribbon.
- Until 1955, the Union Budget was presented in English. However, the Congress-led government later decided to print the Budget papers in both Hindi and English.
- In 1970, Indira Gandhi became the first woman finance minister to present the Budget.
