Budget 2020: FM Nirmala Sitharaman's poetic justice

If audiences have to hear a long speech, they can just fall asleep at some point. To relieve them of drudgery, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman decided to make her Budget 2020 speech interesting with literature.

The speech was laced with references from literature, which varied from a Kashmiri poem to a Tamil one. But is she the first Finance Minister to invoke poetry while delivering the Budget? Not really.

While presenting the Budget in 2016, the then Finance Minister Arun Jaitley recited an Urdu couplet that explained the state of the bad economy.

"Kashti chalaane walon ne jab haar kar di patwar hamein/ Lehar lehar toofan mile aur mauj mauj manjdhaar hamein/ Phir bhi dikhaya hai humne, aur phir yeh dikha denge sabko/ In halato mein aata hai daria karna paar humein."

(When the exhausted sailors handed the oar of the boat to us, we faced storms and rapids everywhere. But we have shown and will keep on showing, how to cross the river in such conditions.)

During the 2013 Budget, P Chidambaram quoted a couplet from Thirukkural, a classic Tamil text: "Kalangathu kanda vinaikkan thulangkathu thookkang kadinthu seyal" (What eye clearly discerns as right, with a steadfast will and mind unslumbering, that should man fulfil.) In 1991, Manmohan Singh quoted Allama Iqbal during his historic Budget speech.

Nirmala Sitharaman herself quoted an Urdu poet Manzur Hashmi during her 2019 Budget speech: "Yaqin ho to koi rasta nikalta hai, hawa ki ot bhi le kar chirag jalta hai".

During her 2020 Budget speech, she recited a few lines from a verse written by a Kashmiri poet Pandit Dina Nath Kaul. She recited the original Kashmiri poem followed by its Hindi translation, which goes - "Humara watan khilte hue Shalimar bagh jaise, humara watan Dal Lake mein khilte hue kamal jaisa, nau jawanon ke garam khoon jaisa, mera watan tera watan, humara watan, duniya ka sabse pyara watan.." ([Our country is like the blooming Shalimar garden, our country is like the Dal Lake's blooming lotuses, like the hot blood of the young soldiers, my country is your country, our country, the world's most beloved country.."]

She also mentioned a couplet by the legendary Tamil poet Thiruvalluvar, while stressing the importance of keeping the environment free from pollution. The couplet that she recited is:

"Piniyinmai, selvam, vilaivinbam, yemam,

aniyanba naativvaindhu."

- Kural 738

It means, "the absence of illness, the abundance of wealth, produce, fulfillment and good security are the five elements that make a country beautiful."

She quoted Tamil poet Aauvaiyar's Bhoomi Thirutthi Unn from Sangam Era. It is a part of Aaathichoodi, verse 81, and it means "one must first tend to till one's land and then eat. One must eat only after work." while stressing the fact that the government shall encourage balanced use of all kinds of fertilisers, including the traditional organic and other innovative ones.

As the nation is busy analysing the puzzles of the Budget, the history of Finance Ministers' fascination with poems lives on.