Yashwant’s tips to keep fiscally fit

Budgeting a complete get-slim, stay-slim programme for today’s downwardly mobile economy

This is an age when everybody wishes to acquire the dimensions of a paper clip and works very hard to achieve them. Union Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha is doing his bit to get the economy into similar shape and has been slogging tirelessly towards this end.

He has, in fact, just come up with a unique exercise regime that promises to put the economy on a solid foundation from where it can decline no further for all time to come — at rock bottom, that is.

EXERCISE 1: Wear a cool grey bandhgala and deploy a little leather briefcase to carry your Budget papers into Parliament with style. Keep your feet slightly apart, do not strain to keep your knees straight, take a deep breath and read out the sacred Budget text to the nation.

Breath control is extremely important if one has to go through the one-and-a-half hour exercise without collapsing.

The hot air that issues forth from your lips could raise temperatures in the House, therefore — should the need arise — drink plenty of water.

EXERCISE 2: Keep feet astride, your shoulders straight and thrust your arms upwards and outwards in postures of unmitigated belligerence, as you stoutly defend the Budget with interlocutors.

Let your imagination flow as you paint the Budget as the perfect panacea for all the fiscal ills that have visited the people and how prosperity is just a document away.

EXERCISE 3: Quickly drop to your knees as word comes in from party headquarters that some course-correction may be required to buttress party prospects for a local municipal election. Very slowly sit down and stretch yourself full-length on the floor.

Keep your hands clasped behind your head, and raise your feet very slowly, bringing it at right angles to your torso in a partial rollback. From that position, announce that the hike in the price of cooking gas will similarly be partially rolled back.

EXERCISE 4: Revert to the position outlined in Exercise 2. Put your hands to your hips and shoot, as you defend the Budget against a nasty whisper campaign that maintains that you alone with your meddling ways are responsible for your party losing elections everywhere.

Hold your ground and flay your hands in all directions as you state firmly for the record that on no account will there be any more rollbacks. And that what the economy needs, above all, is a vit mantri who keeps his wits about him.

EXERCISE 5: Drop to your knees with gaze directed to the ground as the party rank and file throw the kitchen sink at you. Nod like a poor dumb creature as word comes in that unless you do something about your proposed tax plan, you will find yourself drawn and quartered at daybreak. Take a deep breath and prostrate yourself before party bosses, arms thrust forwards, palms pressed together, in a touching gesture of abject supplication.

EXERCISE 6: Turn over on your back, bring your feet over your head and gently propel it all the way until they are planted right in front of your head in a radical rollback posture. The more spineless you are, the easier will be your ability to achieve this.

At this point, quietly announce your plans to radically alter your tax proposals. Such rollbacks may be difficult at first but as you increasingly divest yourself of a backbone, you’ll find the going easier and be able to execute a dozen of these manoeuvres without wincing.

The real purpose of a Budget, always remember, is to provide a framework on which to base your rollbacks. After all, if you didn’t have a Budget, you wouldn’t have rollbacks either, and then where would the economy be?

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