The Halwa Ceremony - will it sweeten Budget?
THE famous Halwa ceremony which marks the commencement of printing process of Budget documents was held in North Block on Tuesday evening.
The ceremony was attended by Finance Minister Jaitley, MoS Nirmala Sitharaman, all the Secretaries in the Finance Ministry - there are four of them - Finance, Expenditure, Revenue and Financial Services. The Chairpersons of both the Boards and other senior officers of the Ministry had a taste of the Halwa. The TARC had recommended abolition of the post of Revenue Secretary and making the Chairmen of the two Boards independent. But look at the picture - there are four secretaries of the ministry near the Halwa and where are the Chairmen of the Boards? Do we abolish all these Secretaries?
After the Halwa ceremony, more than 100 officers of the ministry are sent underground in the basement where they remain cut off from the rest of the world till the Finance Minister presents his budget in Parliament.
There was a tradition long ago when the Finance Secretary's wife could not go shopping before the budget - the prices of anything she buys would go up.
But do we need to maintain such top secrecy for the Budget? Everybody knows about the financial health of the country - the only immediate impact is increase in customs and excise duties - rest of the Budget is effective only after its enactment. Even the Customs and Excise duties can be increased by the Government anytime by notifications. What, then is the sanctity of so much secrecy? Are we just continuing with an illogical tradition? We got out of the hangover of presenting the budget at 5pm, can't we get rid of this secrecy too? Or is that meant for the BULLS and BEARS to run through the China shop?