Interim Budget 2024: Offbeat takeaways from FM's speech

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman made her shortest Budget speech this time compared to the previous five editions. Her speech was different from earlier speeches as it read like a ‘mini-manifesto’ for the upcoming elections.

Here are some offbeat takeaways from the speech:

Praggnanandhaa: The 18-year-old world no: 1 chess player is the only non-political person to be mentioned in Nirmala Sitharaman’s record sixth Budget speech to highlight youth scaling new heights. He is among 80 chess grandmasters at present compared to a little over 20 in 2010.

Prime Ministers: The Finance Minister mentioned Prime Minister Narendra Modi eight times in her close to 5,200-word speech read out in 56 minutes. Former Prime Ministers Lal Bahadur Shastri and AB Vajpayee were the only other persons who found mention in her speech.

ACRONYMS: If the Minister chose not to recite Tamil verses as she used to do in earlier times, she gave new definitions to GDP and FDI. GDP is Governance, Development, and Performance while FDI is First, Develop India. She says the Modi government is guided by the principle ‘Reform, Perform and Transform’.

Key Words: The Finance Minister laced her speech with keywords Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been using to highlight his government’s approach towards governance. ‘Viksit Bharat’ got a mention eight times while ‘Amrit Kaal’, ‘Kartavya Kaal’, ‘aatmanirbaraa’ and ‘Atmanirbar Bharat’ too found repeated mentions. Modi’s ‘Sabka Ka Saath…’ narrative was mentioned seven times.

Number Game: Rs 11,11,111 crore (Rs 11.11 lakh crore) – the minister also chose not to just play with words but with numbers too as she announced a 11.1% rise in capital expenditure outlay.

Ten Years: At least seven times, there was a direct reference to the past ten years of the Modi government in the budget speech. She too had references to the pre-2014 period, without mentioning the UPA specifically.

Ram Temple: The temple in Ayodhya got just a passing mention in the budget speech while President Droupadi Murmu’s address to the nation on the eve of Republic Day as well as her address to address to the joint sitting of Parliament ahead of the Budget Session had a prominent mention about the consecration ceremony.