No matter which government is ruling at the Centre, what the political climate or economic conditions are, one thing is common at every Budget Day in India: the Finance Minister carries the Union Budget in a briefcase.
Every finance minister posing with the Budget briefcase outside the Lok Sabha is not a coincidence, but a colonial ritual which was followed by the British and was carried on in India after independence.
Here’s the story behind the famous briefcase or the ‘Budget Box’:
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The word ‘budget’ comes from the French word ‘bougette,’ meaning 'little bag', once considered to be big enough to hold all one’s wealth.
But Why The Red Briefcase?
India may have followed the British tradition but we have made a few tweaks of our own. The Indian Budget briefcase is not necessarily red, but sometimes brown, tan or black. The ritual of carrying the Budget in a red briefcase was started in 1860 by British Chancellor William Ewart Gladstone.
As per a The New York Times report, Gladstone spoke for nearly four hours that day which was termed by the London Society as “less a speech than an epic.”
The particular briefcase was used in Britain until 2010. It was a red leather-on-pine box lined with black satin, with the letters VR – for Victoria Regina – embossed on its surface.
However, this process of passing on the Budget briefcase from one finance minister to another is not carried on in India.
Post-independence, the first Budget was presented on 26 November 1947 by RK Shanmukham Chetty. The finance minister’s first budget for the entire nation was of mere Rs 197 crore.
Current Finance Minister Arun Jaitley will present the Budget for 2018 on 1 February, till then we have to wait to find out what’s in the box.
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