Fri Jan 31 14:34:28 UTC 2025: ## India’s Fiscal History: From “Dream Budget” to “Black Budget”
**New Delhi, Jan 31, 2024** – As India awaits Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s eighth Budget on February 1st, 2025, a look back at the nation’s fiscal history reveals a spectrum of economic policies. From the landmark liberalizing budgets of Manmohan Singh in 1991 and P. Chidambaram in 1997, to the infamous “Black Budget” of 1973-74, India’s economic journey has been marked by both triumph and crisis.
Singh’s 1991 budget ended the Licence Raj, ushering in an era of liberalization, privatization, and globalization. Chidambaram’s 1997 budget, lauded as a “Dream Budget,” offered significant tax relief. In stark contrast, the 1973-74 budget, presented by Yashwantrao Chavan under Indira Gandhi’s government, became known as the “Black Budget” due to its unprecedented fiscal deficit of Rs 550 crore.
This massive deficit was attributed to the aftermath of the 1971 India-Pakistan war, the subsequent refugee rehabilitation efforts, soaring defense costs (Rs 1,600 crore), and the devastating 1972 drought, which crippled agriculture and led to widespread food shortages and unemployment. Despite the economic strain, the budget included significant allocations for nationalizing coal mines, insurance, and the Indian Copper Corporation (Rs 56 crore), as well as drought relief (Rs 220 crore) and food grain imports (Rs 160 crore). Chavan famously declared, “This is not a time for hesitation but for bold action to secure our future.”
The upcoming 2025 budget, to be presented in a paperless format, will be the second full budget under the BJP-led NDA government’s third term and promises to be another chapter in India’s complex economic narrative.
First Piper 