The nation’s most prolific FMs, in policy and verse
1 min read . Updated: 31 Jan 2023, 12:42 AM IST
PremiumIndia has had 10 finance ministers to have presented at least three full budgets. Here’s who they are, the growth backdrop that framed their budgets, what they did and what they said:
They can be verbose: Manmohan Singh’s landmark 1991 budget speech was 18,380 words, about 1.7 times of what Nirmala Sitharaman has averaged in the past four years.
They are prone to metaphors from ancient texts: Thiruvalluvar was P. Chidambaram’s go-to philosopher. They have presented budgets when India needed reshaping or new direction: Manmohan Singh in the early-1990s and C.D. Deshmukh in the early-1950s.
India has had 10 finance ministers to have presented at least three full budgets. Here’s who they are, the growth backdrop that framed their budgets, what they did and what they said:
