What’s in store?

New Delhi, July 5: Old school finance minister Pranab Mukherjee has shut out budget making even more tightly from the public eye than his predecessors.

The politician belonging to the Indira Gandhi era has given instructions that till he rises from his Lok Sabha seat at 11am tomorrow to give the speech, the budget should remain a closely guarded secret that only his aides will know. Others can make educated guesses.

Telephone calls, cellphones, pen drives and CDs as well as Internet connections have been denied to “those in the know”. Intelligence officials are keeping tabs on all those involved in the process — from the top honchos in the finance ministry to the typesetters who will clank out the budget from a printing press in the basement of North Block, which houses the finance ministry.

Pranab babu, who is credited for taking the first steps towards unshackling India’s socialist trade regime in the early 1980s as the commerce and finance minister, is a stickler for rules and propriety.

Officials say that one of his first instructions after taking over as the finance minister this time is to take North Block out of everybody’s reach, except those who work there.

Secrecy rules had been relaxed in the 1990s and except for a few sections, North Block was open to visitors.

Family insiders recall that a day before the budget in 1984, his son Abhijit had asked his wife Shuvra for money to buy petrol for the family car. Mukherjee told his son not to buy any petrol that day. “He said it may spark off speculations that petrol prices will be raised in the budget.”

Incidentally, petrol and diesel prices were spared from any hikes that year.

A day before the rule to deny public access to North Block came into force from June 1, the minister had called reporters for tea. He just stated that the budget would address the economic slowdown and be centred on the aam admi. He warded off all questions with a smile and a stock reply: “This is a matter related to the Union budget and will be answered after I have presented my budget in Parliament.”

Officials involved in making the budget say Mukherjee involves himself in minute details and pores over every proposal as will a “student preparing for an exam”.

“Not a single scrap of paper remains unread or unaddressed and he retains most figures and data that he has once read.”

However, family insiders said like many a “student” — even during his “studies” leading to the budget — the leader from Bengal did take out time for “light” reading.

History is believed to be his favourite subject and one of the books he is believed to have read and re-read is The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.

Perhaps, for Mukherjee, the budget is still an examination. At 73, he will be expected to tread the tightrope between reforms and the need to come true on election promises of food, education and housing for the poor.