Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman took a digital tablet wrapped in a traditional bahi-khata style pouch as she headed for Parliament to present the full Budget 2024-25 in a paperless format just like the previous years.
Draped in a white silk saree with a magenta border, she posed for the traditional ‘briefcase’ picture outside her office, along with her team of officials, before heading to meet the President.
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Ms. Sitharaman has stuck to Indian textiles and craftsmanship while presenting the Union Budgets since 2019. Ranging from silk to beautiful handloom, Ms. Sitharamna’s sarees have become a rather unusual aspect of the budget that some people look forward to every year.
Changing tradition
Ms. Sitharaman, India's first full-time woman Finance Minister, ditched the colonial legacy of a Budget briefcase for the traditional bahi-khata to carry Union Budget papers in July 2019.
She used the same the following year, and in 2021, she swapped traditional papers with a digital tablet for carrying her speech and other Budget documents. That tradition has continued this year as well.
She used a red cloth folder enclosed with a string and emblazoned with the national emblem to carry Budget documents.
“Why did I not use a leather bag to carry budget documents? I thought it is high time we moved on from the British hangover, to do something on our own. And well, easier for me to carry too,” she had said in 2019 after presenting her maiden Budget in 2019.
One of her predecessors, P. Chidambaram of the Congress, had scoffed at her choice that year, saying, "A Congress finance minister in future will bring an iPad." And Ms. Sitharaman did just that in 2021, 2022 and 2023 and twice this year.
Her Budget for the fiscal beginning April 2024 (FY2024-25) is the Modi government's 13th straight Budget since 2014 (including two interim Budgets presented ahead of general elections in 2019 and 2024).
Before Ms. Sitharaman, a long-standing colonial tradition in connection with the Budget presentation was broken during the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government when the then Ffinance Minister Yashwant Sinha presented the Budget at 11 a.m. rather than at the traditional time of 5 p.m. Since then, all the governments have been presenting the Budget at 11 am.
Published - July 23, 2024 11:46 am IST
