Worth sharing, read in some news article The length of the budget speech is often an indication of the state of the economy. Consider UPA-2 speeches by two finance ministers. Pranab Mukherjee started his first budget (2009-10) with high optimism and extensive sops for business and his budget speech was all of 11,700 words. Next year, as inflation worsened and problems started appearing on the horizon, his speech extended to 12,591 words. The year after, as stagflation was visible, his speech length increased to 13,877 words. His swansong budget of 2012-13 stretched to 14,157 words. Luckily, we were spared longer speeches by sending him off to R Bhavan. Chidambaram brought the verbiage down to 12,749 last year (2013-14), and his interim budget, was down to 6,586. The economy is now less worse off than before, but not yet out of the woods. What will Arun Jaitley do? In his maiden budget, he may want to wax eloquent, but Chidus last figure (around 6,000 words) is a good benchmark to follow. The more he yaks, the less he is likely to deliver in terms of his promises. The moral: make fewer but more believable promises.
Posted on: Thu, 10 Jul 2014 05:23:33 +0000
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