Mr Sinha expressed concern that the nation could face a serious crisis if the vote-on-account and supplementary grants were not passed by Parliament before the end of the month. Mr Sinha soon added that this was not the first time when the Budget got jeopardised by political developments. He expressed the hope that all political parties would keep the nation's interest in mind and not allow the Budget to become a victim of party politics in the current scenario.

Referring to the ongoing political crisis triggered by the Tehelka.com revelations, the finance minister expressed regret at the fact that during the past 50 years no system had been evolved for political funding. Rather than view the issue of political party fund raising in partisan terms, he said there should be a consensus between parties on a methodology to enable budgetary funding of polls. He also said that every party should be asked to declare the source of its assets. However, he pointed out that it suited none to have in place such a mechanism. Addressing the gathering, RBI Governor Bimal Jalan exhorted financial journalists not to lose sight of the broader socio-economic issues, while reporting and writing about the ups and downs in the markets, and urged them to consider whether there is greater scope for verification, consistency and seriousness even within the narrow issues of financial regulation, markets and corporate news.

He remarked that when things were going smoothly, there was an out cry for doing away with regulators and letting markets do what they wanted to do.

The legislation or the regulator was seen to be in the way and even errant operators were defended as having committed no wrong. However, when things went astray, the regulator/norms was accused of being slack.

"Don't we need a more balanced and consistent view even of the narrow field of the capital markets and corporate behaviour?" he asked. "It must be decided and accepted, then that we do not need regulators and safety nets."

The Financial Express Award for Lifetime Achievement in Economics was awarded this year to former Reserve Bank of India governor Dr IG Patel. In his thanksgiving response, Dr Patel revealed that in 1990 the Chandra Shekhar government had almost finalised a balance of payments support programme with the International Monetary Fund, which could have averted the balance of payments crisis that year.

Mr Yashwant Sinha, who was the finance minister at the time, had completed the formalities of entering into an adjustment programme with the IMF. If the 1991 budget of Mr Sinha had been presented in February 1991 and the Congress Party had not withdrawn support to the Chandra Shekhar government, "there would not have been any economic crisis that year" declared Dr Patel.

Once again it was politics that had hurt the economy, said Dr Patel, expressing the hope that this year politics would not come in the way of economic policies.