India's Budget Day, Full of Sound and Fury

Jeering and chanting echoed around the Indian Parliament on March 16 as members gave a hostile reception to Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee’s budget. Waving their arms and fists, opposition politicians stood up repeatedly during the two-hour speech to shout insults and taunts at Mukherjee and the governing coalition dominated by the Congress Party as speaker Meera Kumar repeatedly appealed for calm. “Let’s have order in the house,” she pleaded in vain. “Please sit down.”

Budget Day in the Indian capital is in some ways a close follower of the British equivalent. In Britain, for years, the Chancellor of the Exchequer ceremoniously paraded into the House of Commons clutching a Victorian-era “budget box,”a kind of briefcase. In similar fashion, Mukherjee clutched a red leather briefcase containing the budget as he entered the Indian Parliament building.