It was sheer coincidence that the Union Budget for 2011-12 was presented on a day when all of Hollywood, tricked out in their party best, was making its way to the Oscars. A nearly two hour speech on taxes and expenditure of the Union of India had no hope in hell of competing for eyeballs, and yet it did.
In Delhi, where the power elite has to have the instincts of a weathercock to survive, the interplay in the front row of the treasury benches in the Lok Sabha revealed a lot. As soon as Pranab Mukherjee entered the Lok Sabha with his maroon bag containing the budget papers, the treasury benches broke out in spontaneous table thumping. Mukherjee, known for his fearsome temper, was all smiles. The government applauding its finance minister before a budget speech is not something that should elicit comment, and yet it did.
For Mukherjee, the head of over 50 Groups of Ministers on all sorts of policy issues, and the ?go to? man in the government for all crises appeared to be crossing some sort of rubicon of trust with both Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress president Sonia Gandhi. His colleagues in the party and the government seemed to be acknowledging that.
Although he was depended upon by both these people, Mukherjee was not said to be cosy with either. With Sonia Gandhi, a troubled history with Rajiv Gandhi was said to be responsible for a trust deficit, and with Manmohan Singh, the fact that Mukherjee had appointed Singh as RBI governor in the 1980s was touted as the reason.
On Monday, however, this was history. Manmohan Singh had already given signs of this when he thanked Mukherjee during his speech in Parliament last week. And Gandhi?s very warm handshake and extended cosy chat with Mukherjee after the speech was over were noted by all. The recent troubles within the Congress and in the government had, it seems, put those old resentments aside, and engendered a greater appreciation of the diminutive war horse.
During his budget speech, Mukherjee mentioned that his penchant for allotting R300 crore to several projects was because he was fond of the number 3. From the binary of government and party, a trinity seems to be emerging. Hail the power of three.