Kashmir to Kanyakumari, FMs show off their verse-tality

The use of poetry was hardly unusual. After all, all finance ministers have done so, from Manmohan Singh, P Chidambaram to Arun Jaitley.
But Nirmala Sitharaman’s choice had a political right to it. She read out a verse in Kashmiri, with a few voices from the opposition immediately shouting about the region’s lockdown. They had not heard the finance minister fully, as she translated a key sentence about the lotus blooming in the Dal lake.
Sitharaman chose Dinanath Koul’s evocative poem, Myon Vatan.Koul, who used the pen name Nadim, was a Sahitya Akademi recipient. “Our country is like Shalimar Bagh, our country is like the lotus in the Dal Lake, our country is like the warm blood of the youth, my country, your country, our country, the most adorable country in the world.”
At a time when Jammu and Kashmir has been denuded of its special status, the poem was redolent with political meaning. And the lotus simile brought smiles on the faces of the BJP leaders as the opposition fell silent. Manmohan Singh, who had a flair for Urdu poetry, cited Allama Iqbal and Muzaffar Razmi Kairanvi. P Chidambaram regularly referred to ancient Tamil poet Thiruvalluvar, as did Sitharaman incidentally. Yashwant Sinha and Arun Jaitley also freely quoted verse.
The sunny yellow silk sari complemented Sitharaman’s allusion to the bouquet of flowers that comprised the three broad themes of the Budget — Aspirational India, economic development and Caring India.
Dressed in tune with the festive spirit of Basant Panchami, Sitharaman went on for long without a sip of water, a decision that left her feeling dehydrated. With two pages to go, she said the speech be considered tabled.
The FM balanced politics and fiscal policies, while the opposition protested against Sitharaman’s claim of government’s commitment to “happiness, safety and security” of every Indian, disrupting her address with reference to MoS finance Anurag Thakur’s controversial “goli maaro” speech.
Loud protests, led by Trinamool MP Kalyan Banerjee who is blessed with strong lung power, erupted when the FM announced the government decision to disinvest a part of its stake in Life Insurance Corporation.
Sitharaman tapped into a couple of more poets. Classical Sanskrit poet Kalidas was quoted to convey how a just and generous ruler collects drops and gives back copiously. “They collect only for people’s wellbeing” said the ancient work Raghuvamsa. She also dipped into Tamil woman saint poet Aauvaiyar to quote “BhumitiruthiUnn” — “first tend to till one's land and then eat”.
Tulsidas, Amir Khusro, Rabindranath Tagore, Bharathiyar, Ramdhari Singh Dinkar, Mirza Ghalib, Rahat Indori, Bashir Badr and Dushyant Kumar were all heard in Lok Sabha in the winter and budget sessions in 2019.