New Delhi, Feb. 28: Among the things that finance minister Arun Jaitley revealed to us today was that the allocation for couplets in his scheme was tight; he could squeeze in no more than a single, and not one that stirred an expectant full house. " Kuchh to phool khilaye hamne, aur kuchh phool khilane hain; Mushkil yeh hai bagh mein ab bhi kaante kai purane hain." (Some flowers we've nursed to bloom, and we will nurse yet more; Trouble is this garden's littered with many thorns of yore.)
If the finance minister was trying to needle the Congress, it didn't seem to pinch. The Congress benches were probably still too numb from yesterday's pummelling at the hands of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to feel the rub of it. Jaitley's verse offering, unascribed and probably of anonymous provenance, went the way of all anodyne notes, sans echo.
Even so, Congress president Sonia Gandhi, may have been taken a little aback by Jaitley's attempted jibe at the outset of his 90 minutes on the lectern. Moments before, as the Lok Sabha began to gather to hear out the budget, Jaitley had walked across the well from the treasury to meet Sonia. It's unclear what their conversation was about but Jaitley hovered on her front seat for a fair few minutes, far too long for it to have been merely exchange of pleasantries. Jaitley slipped back to his seat only moments before Modi arrived. A hush fell and presently, Jaitley began to unveil the first full budget of Modi Sarkar.
It soon began to be apparent that corporate honchos, hot on big bang expectations, had probably done well to forsake gallery seats for chairs in television studios; even industrialist Rahul Bajaj, a budget-day regular in Parliament for several years, had chosen to absent himself.
Jaitley was sounding a bit like an old-school welfare socialist, belabouring the needs of the agricultural sector and poverty alleviation, flagging scheme after social sector scheme aimed at a populace that industry captains thought would get short shrift from a "reformist" government - housing for the rural poor, roads, sanitation, electricity, drinking water, health, education, increase in agricultural productivity, an effort to "end" the rural-urban divide, Jan-Dhan, Jan-Suraksha, MNREGA.... This was not the "Amrut Mahotsav" the blue-chip backers of Modi Sarkar had hoped to begin celebrating budget day on. But they probably didn't account for the politicos keeping a keen eye on what brought it, and will keep it, in power - the voter. Far too many of them it lost in the Delhi elections just weeks ago, it's the kind of haemorrhage it is loath to suffer in future.
They could take heart, though, from the hearty macro projections Jaitley made at the very outset. Modi Sarkar had inherited "doom and gloom", Jaitley said, claiming to have come "a long way" in the short nine-month period. "The world is predicting it is India's chance to fly," Jaitley said, "We are about to take off on a faster monetary tracjectory... incremental change is just not enough, we are aiming at a quantum jump." In short, a prophecy of robust economic health.
The same account the finance minister couldn't give of himself. Fifteen minutes into his speech, Speaker Sumitra Mahajan sensed Jaitley's discomfiture standing and said he could complete his speech sitting. Jaitley thanked her and said he would take her offer should he require to. A few minutes later, he could stand no longer and took a seat. And while there, he needed to constantly boost himself with water and other prescribed potions that came to him in tumblers wrapped in paper napkins. He was clearly in no frame for flowery couplets.
