FORTUNE TELLERS

India’s journey from a socially and financially battered nation to the world’s fifth largest economy is also the story of how some crises prompted prime ministers to look for solutions that led to epochal economic changes

- PRATUL SHARMA

On November 26, 1947 independent India's first finance minister R.K. Shanmukham Chetty, a non-Congressman handpicked by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, presented the maiden budget with a promise to spend 197.39 crore. A large chunk of it was devoted to ensuring food security and the rehabilitation of partition refugees. While Chetty was assured of revenue of about 171 crore, the 2022-23 budget presented by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman proposed to spend 39,44,909 crore, about 20,000 times more.

India in 1947 was left socially and financially battered by the British. In 2022, its economy surpassed that of its erstwhile colonial masters to became the fifth largest in the world. This journey is also the story of how some crises prompted successive prime ministers to look for solutions that led to epochal economic changes in the country.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi made a few bold reform moves, particularly during the pandemic, giving the economy a direction—Atmanirbhar Bharat initiatives to make India a manufacturing hub, the increased digitisation of financial instruments, direct beneficiary transfer scheme, GST, the insolvency and bankruptcy code.

It was also a difficult situation—the balance of payment crisis in 1991—that forced prime minster, P.V. Narasimha Rao, to make a break from the past with the help of finance minister Manmohan Singh. In fact, Nehru himself was prompted to choose a direction by a humanitarian crisis that threatened the fledgling nation.