Of these budget speeches, Singh’s 1991 speech was the longest at 18,364 words. Sinha made the longest budget speeches on average in the post-liberalization era (average of 14,895 words). Chidambaram delivered relatively smaller budget speeches (12,830). With eight budgets under his belt, he also holds the record of the second highest number of budget speeches by an Indian finance minister, right behind Morarji Desai who delivered 10. All these budget speeches during the period, which was delivered by men—a record Nirmala Sitharaman will break with her 5 July speech—have some common patterns and several differences.

Source: Mint July 02, 2019 17:15 UTC