The secret wish of all finance ministers

Time has come to discard the practice of reading out Part A of the Budget in the house

What do P Chidambaram, Yashwant Sinha, the late Jaswant Singh, the late Pranab Mukherji and the late Arun Jaitley have in common? Other than being finance ministers, just one thing.

They have all believed that Part A of the Budget speech should not have to be read out fully. Some of them have told me as much.

They all agree that reading only 10 per cent of it would be enough to suggest, if not prove, that the government is serious about welfare and investment and so on. The rest can and should just be placed on the Table of the House.

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