Pranab will again try to please madam
Arati R Jerath

New Delhi: Finance minister Dr.Pranab Mukherjee can hardly have missed the irony of his situation. Twenty five years ago, when he presented his last budget for Indira Gandhi, he played the cautious reformer, taking baby steps to open up a tightly-controlled socialist economy without upsetting the political sensibilities of his Left-leaning party.

As he pens his budget speech circa 2009, to be presented on Monday, he finds himself in a similar role. Circumscribed by the aam aadmi politics of the Congress party's recent election victory, Mukherjee will again be batting cautiously as he ducks calls for sweeping reforms, the loudest of which have come from his own ministry, in the annual economic survey prepared by chief economic advisor Arvind Virmani.

But this is not 1984. Then, Mukherjee had a head full of black hair, a trusty pipe to keep him going through the arduous task of preparing a difficult budget and of course, Indira Gandhi's full backing as her blue-eyed boy. Today, he has neither the hair nor the pipe (he has given up smoking) and he is acutely aware that he stands very much alone in the spotlight.

Two former finance ministers, Manmohan Singh and P Chidambaram, will be watching closely and scrutinising every word. One is his boss, the prime minister. And there's his other boss, Sonia Gandhi, whose one-line whip to all ministers is to deliver on the party's election promises.

It's a tough task and Mukherjee is treading very carefully. He has stopped going home for lunch and spends an extra hour or two at night in his office in North Block, searching for the right nuances to put into his speech. He has gone through the widest possible consultations over the past few weeks. For the first time, Indian industry was split into different sectors for individual discussions. The financial sector was called in separately, as was the IT sector.
He had a three-and-a-half hour long meeting at the Congress headquarters with party office bearers and members of the working committee.

He has spoken to RBI governor D Subbarao and Planning Commission deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia, who was being spoken of as a possible finance minister before Mukherjee was appointed. And he has bounced his ideas off the PM and Sonia, especially Sonia. Obviously, Mukherjee is leaving no stone unturned in crafting the widest possible consensus.

Mukherjee lacks the academic weight of Manmohan Singh the economist or the glib articulation of Chidambaram the lawyer. He's a politician through and through. So, expect a politician's budget, not a clever sleight of hand or an expert's prescription. And instead of flourishes from Bollywood, like Chidambaram's quip of Main Hoon Na or Jaswant Singh's reference to another Shahrukh Khan starrer, Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gum, there may be a quote or two from Rabindranath Tagore or a Sanskrit shlokha.