NIRMALA’S ‘NEW INDIA’ BUDGET 2019 - 20
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman was the second woman finance minister to present the budget 2019-20 on July 5 – first woman being Indira Gandhi in 1970 as a Prime Minister holding Finance portfolio. It took Nirmala 2 hours and 15 minutes and interestingly, while reading out the budget, she did not pause even to have a glass of water. Nirmala had also broken the conventions followed by her predecessors on two counts. • Conventional Leather Brief Case to carry the budget papers – Colonial British Custom was given up by Nirmala with a bright red cloth bag with a small national emblem of India in golden metal at the centre beautifully tied around by a golden thread to carry the budget papers to the parliament house. • • Reading the allocations to different ministries or the macro economic numbers like projected revenues or expenditure was skipped by saying that these are very much available in the annexure of the budget documents