In numbers and charts: A history of India’s Budgets since 1947


Parting pains

The economic burden of the massive humanitarian crisis created by the partition was evident in the first budget of independent India presented by R.K. Shanmukham Chetty in November 1947. The defence forces played a pivotal role in the rehabilitation of refugees. The country was also in the middle of a military conflict with Pakistan. As a result, a staggering 47% of the total expenditure was earmarked for defence. The fiscal deficit was as much as 21% of the expenditure. The first budget aimed to earn more than 80% of the government’s income from taxes. Today, the expenditure on defence has come down to 8%, and borrowings and other liabilities form one-third of overall receipts.

India’s budgeteers

Since Independence, there have been 92 Union budgets, including 12 interim budgets that are presented before elections. Nirmala Sitharaman will table her eighth and the country’s 93rd budget on Saturday. Morarji Desai, who later became the prime minister of India, has tabled the highest number of budgets—10 of them. Congress’ P. Chidambaram is at the second spot with nine budgets.

Not so women-friendly

With an aim to track the budgetary allocations through a gender lens, gender budgeting was first introduced in 2005-06. Historically, around 5% of the funds were spent on schemes benefiting women, and the share stood at 6.8% last year. The schemes are of two kinds: those that are fully women-specific (Part A) and those partially addressing women’s developmental needs (Part B).

Taxing gains

The tax receipts of the central government have stayed at nearly 7% of GDP since 2009-10, after crossing 8% of GDP for a few years. The share of non-tax revenues has also dropped since then, mostly remaining below 2%. For FY25, the government had budgeted a 11.7% increase for gross and 11.2% increase for net tax revenues over the revised estimates for FY24, and the collections are expected to overshoot the estimates. The non-tax revenues were budgeted to increase 45.2%.

Also Read: Budget 2025 | Why cutting income tax could be a win-win for the government

Budget curiosity

This annual financial exercise which sets the tone for policy and financial reforms every year derives its name from the French word ‘bougette’, which means a leather briefcase. The much-hyped event generates a lot of interest as Indians watch out for tax reliefs and other major announcements. Google search interest for the word “budget” this year was the highest in states of Karnataka, Delhi, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana.

Epochal budget

On 24 July 1991, then finance minister Manmohan Singh tabled a Union budget that would set the tone for India’s economic growth for years to come. A balance of payments crisis, the collapse of the Soviet bloc, double-digit inflation and an over-reliance on imports had left the country teetering on the brink of an economic collapse. India’s foreign exchange reserves had dwindled to a meagre $1.1 billion (or 2,500 crore at that time) at one point ahead of the budget, barely enough to support imports for two weeks. Three decades on, the iconic budget continues to find favour across the political spectrum.

The deficit story

India’s fiscal deficit, a measure of the health of a government’s finances, has seen lots of ups and downs. Cautious spending in early years kept it below 5% of GDP. But in the 1980s, when focus shifted to subsidies and welfare, it shot up to 8.3%, right before the balance of payments crisis. However, after the 1991 reforms, efforts were made to keep it at a sustainable level, and a 2003 law gave guidelines to bring it down to 3% of GDP by 2007-08. The aim remains elusive, with the covid-19 pandemic and a clean-up of account books pushing it to 9.2% in 2020-21. Currently, the government is trying to bring it down to 4.5% by 2025-26, but the timeline for reaching the 3% target remains uncertain.

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Interim formalities

Interim budgets, which aim to manage spending for a short duration until a new government is elected, are traditionally known to adopt a conservative approach. Since 2000, there have been five interim budgets: three by governments that returned to power, and two that were followed by a change in government. Negligible variation was observed in the headline figures on the three occasions when the government retained power. However, the targets of the main budget, presented after the elections, were slightly higher when power changed hands. Last year being an exception, when the government’s expenditure estimates in the main budget were more than the estimates in the interim budget.

Other big numbers:

3 times: That’s the number of times the Union budget was presented by a sitting prime minister. It was Jawaharlal Nehru in 1958, Indira Gandhi in 1970, and Rajiv Gandhi in 1987, in each case following the resignations of their respective finance ministers. Nehru also held the office for two other very brief periods in the absence of a regular finance minister—in 1948 for 36 days and in 1956 for 37 days—but those tenures did not include the budget exercise.

18,650: Number of words in Manmohan Singh’s 1991 budget speech. This was the longest budget speech in terms of number of words. However, the record for the longest budget speech in terms of time is held by Nirmala Sitharaman. In 2020, she broke her own record of the previous year by delivering a speech that was 2 hours 42 minutes long. The shortest budget speech was by Hirubhai M. Patel, who served as finance minister under the Morarji Desai-led government. His 1977 interim budget speech was 800 words long.

Also Read: Why historical figures vanished from Nirmala Sitharaman’s budget speeches

72%: This is the share of ministries traditionally having a minuscule allocation in the overall budget spent. In the last 16 years, 42 ministries and departments had a share of less than 1% in the Centre’s expenditure. This includes the ministry of social justice and empowerment and the department of atomic energy. On the other side, an average of over 50% of the outlays over a decade have gone to only two ministries. Finance and defence made up 39% and 13% of allocations in the 2025 Budget.

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