Pranab's revenge on the SP's cycle!

The Finance Minister, Mr Pranab Mukherjee, is not the most colourful of speakers.

Nor can one expect interesting Urdu couplets from him that Dr Manmohan Singh as Finance Minister had entertained us with during his Budget speeches, even though delivered in his monotonous voice. Even the suave Jaswant Singh had come out with some colourful couplets when he had done the Budget honours as Finance Minister. P. Chidambaram's penchant, of course, was for couplets from the Thirukkural .

But Pranabda makes up for the lack of sparkle in his personality and speech delivery, and the lack of poetry in his kitty, by the twinkle in his eye and a half-mischievous smile.

So this year's Budget too, had some lighter moments when viewers got a glance into what was running through the mind of the Bengali Babu, who is the Congress's troubleshooter when it comes to placating an angry Trinamool Chief Mamata Didi. One such light moment came on Friday when some way into the speech, some MPs interjected with loud complaints that they couldn't' hear the FM.

ROLLBACK OF SPEECH

As the audio hitch was restored quickly, Pranabda volunteered to repeat a couple of paras of his speech, and went as far as to say: “Rollback of speech? No problem”. Once again the twinkle in the eye was back; the reference this time was to an angry Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee demanding a rollback in the hike in Railway passenger fares.

Another moment for smiles in an otherwise drab speech was when Pranab Babu announced a Customs duty hike on bicycles and their parts.

There was a bit of commotion in the House and as the Finance Minister had a mischievous half smile playing on his lips, one realised the reason for the good-natured heckling.

Apparently some of the MPs were drawing a parallel between this Budget proposal and the Samajwadi Party's election symbol, the humble bicycle, having derailed the Congress's grand plans of a revival in Uttar Pradesh in the recent elections. The inference: the Congress was hitting back with a hike in duty on bicycles!

The FM began his speech commenting on how for the Indian economy, “recovery was interrupted this year” due to the debt crises in the Euro Zone, political turmoil in West Asia, rise in crude oil price and the earthquake in Japan.

SENSEX MOVEMENT

Those who watched the Budget speech on business channels would not have failed to note the movements of the Sensex in tune with the Budget proposals.

A listless Sensex perked up when the Finance Minister announced a tax break for an investment of Rs 50,000 in equity, danced up further at the announcement of a 20 per cent cut in the STT (Securities Transaction Tax), but slumped in total disinterest to a barely 9 point gain when the Speech discussed proposals on rural drinking water and sanitation that our equity market obviously considers a drab subject.

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