The question then naturally arises as to why I am not particularly enamoured about the Honourable Finance Minister of Bharat. To be fair to him, fired by the spirit of swadeshi, Sinha has done all a great favour by deciding to present the Union Budget for 1999-2000 on Saturday, 27 February, at 11.00 am. Thus, more than fifty years after Independence, he has rid the country of one more relic of the colonial past: the unsavoury convention of presenting Budgets at 5.00 pm when the markets in London would open.

The question remains as to why I don't think Yashwant Sinha is the kind of guy with whom I would like to go on a long trek to the Himalayas. Take this year's Budget. He's already told the entire nation that it would be a "hard" budget not a "harsh" one. Soon thereafter, he went ahead and increased the officially administered prices of rice, wheat, sugar and urea. Sinha's Cabinet colleagues and coalition partners screamed blue murder and within a few days, the government had once again not only established its pro-poor credentials but also sent out a message loud and clear to the country at large that the "roll-back" prefix attached to the Finance Minister's name was there for a good reason. Just because Sinha rolled back the prices of urea, petrol and customs duty last June, you thought he would not do it again. What can I say? Lily, you are indeed so silly; I thought you were hotter than a red chilly.

One good aspect about all these nasty price hikes is that the sooner they are got over with, the better. That way, the Budget looks better. It appears Sinha has picked up a tip or two from former Finance Ministers (like Narayan Datt Tiwari, "na nar, na nari") who did exactly what he has done and then, reduced taxes on kajal and kum-kum to show how much he favoured empowerment of women. It is hardly surprising then that sections of the extended Sangh parivar are most upset with people like Vajpayee and Sinha who are appearing like Congressmen in disguise. Given the heat generated by the fire-breathing saffron brigade, Sinha's advocacy of "calibrated" liberalisation may go down well in Davos (Switzerland) but not in Dangs district (Gujarat).

Not very long ago, Sinha had bitterly complained at a press conference that he was the most maligned Finance Minister India ever had. To be fair to him, he has also been the most transparent FM. Barely three weeks before the presentation of the Budget, he inaugurated the Finance Ministry's new website and placed on it important facts and figures about the profligate ways of the government. Thanks to his generosity, the whole world now knows that the country's revenue deficit had gone up threefold in the first three quarters of the current financial year. Isn't that a nice thing for the FM to do?

That is, make it all public well in advance so that people do not have wait till Budget day to start moaning and groaning.

Sinha is different in at least one important respect from all previous Indian Finance Ministers. Nearly one month before that dull, boring document is read out in front of television cameras, he has already informed all that matter what the main features of the Budget would be.

Ladies and gentlemen, hear hear! The cumbersome excise duty structure would be rationalised by reducing the number of tax slabs, the list of items eligible for zero-duty import would be cut drastically, the anomaly between the capital gains tax rates applicable to Indians and foreigners would be removed to provide the proverbial level playing field, thereby sending stockmarkets soaring skywards.... have I forgotten something? Well, maybe.