The Budget and Me
I suppose there must be hundreds of people like me who add 2 and 2 together and never get 4. Among the many things I do not have a head for, figures would top the list. I believe now that I am not on the job market,
I can publicly confess that I was not being sent up by my school for my matriculation examination because my marks in mathematics never reached two digit figures.
It took me a long while to try to understand that leaving pages blank in the answer book and drawing pictures of the girls in my class who had good figures, was not the same as dealing with figures in the question paper.
Even today, at a ripe old age when the word figure is uttered the only thing I can think of is 36-24-36.
My mother who was a very persuasive person especially when she carried her rosary in her hand, pleaded with the headmaster, to let me take the exam.
When the results were out and a crowd had gathered around the headmaster my requests to him to give me my results were brushed aside because obviously he was keen to find out how his best students had fared.
When the list of subject toppers was being read he announced with horror in his eyes that I had broken the Bombay University record for the compulsory English paper by scoring over 80%, a common occurrence how but a phenomenon in those days. This information automatically led to the conclusion that I must have also passed the matriculation examination.
With the budget due in a few days, I realize that I should have schooled myself in the intricacies of at least arithmetic. I now realize that my ignorance of arithmetic and simple financial matters led to my family members taking advantage of my ignorance when the time came for budget allocation of the family.
Looking back, I realize that I could never understand how there were generous allocations for children’s pocket money, expensive clothing, chocolates and fancy kitchen gadgets which left no money at all for life-saving items like whiskey, rum and blood thinners like aspirin.
In later years I realized that my ignorance and elementary mathematics on financial matters was allowing my managers to take me for a ride (not to be mistaken for free Company transport) in an Organization that certainly gave high priority to people development but never at the cost of productivity.
If I have managed to survive it is because I am not afraid to ask for help or to admit to my boss that somebody from the lower rungs of my department had prepared my Budget, which my boss, said was one of the best budgets he has seen from any department.
Although I started to notice that this low-rung financial wizard was suddenly being promoted on a regular basis I had enough self-esteem and feelings of security to realize that his wizardry had a narrow limitation and there was no threat of my being superseded.
As a result there are many things in life that I’ve never hesitated to delegate to people who I felt could do those things better than I could.
My children have always chastised me for never reading the instruction booklets of my Computer, my T.V. my Cell phone, or even some of the life-saving kitchen gadgets that we have. It has never caused me a problem because I always know whom to ask for assistance and I can be very generous in affirming such people and praising them for their skills.
After a time, I felt that my generous and helpful neighbours had started to wonder how my visits to enquire about their health always coincided with what restaurants call the ‘Happy Hour.’
I believe that the whole of Mumbai learnt to delegate and seek assistance on Budget matters by relying on the great expertise of the late Nani Phalkivala who used to dissect the Budget and go over it with a magnifying lens and even discovering a great amount of humor in the fine print. This was his annual offering free of cost to the whole of Mumbai and especially to ‘Budget Dummies’ like me.
When the Budget is presented in the Lok Sabha, at the time of writing this piece, I will as usual watch it on T.V. knowing fully well that I will not understand any of the figures but happy at the thought of watching the antics of other people in the Lok Sabha, who also don’t understand the Budget but make a noise all the same.
My special attention will be riveted on scamsters who are experts on the Budget and its loopholes, most of whom should have been sitting behind prison bars, instead of occupying seats in the sacrosanct premises of the august House.
I also wait with bated breath for the one thing I understand namely the allocation under the Head ‘Personal Income Tax’, as a result of which I shall become poorer than I have been in the previous year.
My written recommendation to every single Finance Minister that the allocation should find its place under the Head, ‘Highway Robbery’, has obviously fallen on deaf ears.
Yet, I am specially glued to the T.V. for those beautiful moments when the slime and dirt of politics is set aside, however temporarily, and the session is raised to an uplifting moment with an outpouring of poetry, from the verses of Rabindranath Tagore and Swami Vivekananda to the rare breed of politician cum poets like Atal Bihari Vajpayee and V.P. Singhji.
It is my dream that in the next Budget Session, the poetry will be accompanied with the soothing sounds of Sufi music.