Random Musings 1: Budget Epiphanies

I’ve always considered Budget Day akin to an AGM held by a bunch of highway robbers who had taken your hard-earned money and are now coming up with fancy excuses to explain where they are spending it.

If there’s one fictional character who truly epitomised white cishet mediocrity, it was Harry Potter.

The wanker coasted through seven books by waving his wand and shouting Expelliarmus, banking on Hermione’s skills and the privilege of having the same wand core as Voldemort and a little piece of his soul. Very much like Harry, I had, thanks to smarter colleagues, coasted from Budget to Budget – without understanding the difference between physical and fiscal – but all that changed this year.

Like Harry was forced to learn the Summoning Charm for the Triwizard tournament’s first task, I was forced to – thanks to a work project – listen and try to decipher the entire Budget. Until now, I’d spent every Budget Day collating memes and figuring out how much more expensive cigarettes had become.

I’ve always considered Budget Day akin to an AGM held by a bunch of highway robbers who had taken your hard-earned money and are now coming up with fancy excuses to explain where they are spending it. As a Bengali – a culture bred on Marx and Hegel - I am genetically inclined to not only disdain business, but also despise any talk of money.  It's deeply unkultucharal, like listening to Tumpa instead of Rabindrasangeet. Of course, it’s a different matter that it was the rich coffers of the Tagore family that allowed Robi boy to sit around writing poems about foreign women instead of finding a way to feed himself and his near and dear ones.

As I heard Ms. Sitharaman go from one part of the Budget to another, it dawned upon me that Sir Humphrey Appleby was wrong about the function of government, and it wasn’t just to prevent anarchy. The sheer number of things that the Indian state attempts at all times would make anyone channel their inner Salman and say: “Yaar kitna mehnat karte hain?”

Of course, the highlight of the budget is the comments where opposition leaders and their de-facto cheerleaders decry that the Budget had nothing for the common man, poor people, or tribals, which suggests that like me of yore, they didn’t listen to the budget at all.