The finance minister recently said something about her forthcoming Budget being the only one of its kind in 100 years. People laughed at her.
Technically, however, what she said is true by a slender margin. We have not had a lockdown caused by a pandemic ever before. But there was one other occasion when the finance minister had to present a Budget in equally terrible, if not worse, circumstances — in 1947, just after India had been divided by the British into two countries.
Sir R K Shanmugam Chetty, a businessman from Madras with no particular expertise in
Technically, however, what she said is true by a slender margin. We have not had a lockdown caused by a pandemic ever before. But there was one other occasion when the finance minister had to present a Budget in equally terrible, if not worse, circumstances — in 1947, just after India had been divided by the British into two countries.
Sir R K Shanmugam Chetty, a businessman from Madras with no particular expertise in
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