Nani Palkhivala: The man who made the Budget speech bigger than a sports event

It’s Budget Day and everyone is glued to their television sets or mobile phones trying to discern what to make of the annual financial statement presented by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman. However, not too long ago, rather than watching noisy debates, people from far and wide would gather at Mumbai’s Brabourne Stadium to hear noted jurist Nani Palkhivala take on the document. Catch all the live updates of Budget 2023 HERE His understanding of the Budget was so good that for many Indians his analysis of the Budget was perhaps more important than the finance minister’s speech in Parliament. Additionally, it is said that even the powers that be in Delhi waited eagerly to read what his verdict was and that he if he gave it a thumbs down, it could spell serious trouble. Who is Nani Palkhivala Nani Ardeshir Palkhivala was born on 16 January 1920 in the Bombay Presidency of British India to a Parsi working-class family and spent his childhood at Nana Chowk, Bombay. When he was denied the post of an English professor at Bombay University, he enrolled himself at Government Law College in what was then Bombay. In 1946, he passed his Bar and his focus was on commercial and tax law. In 1949, he authored The Law and Practice of Income Tax and this magnum opus, which went into several editions, became the standard reference book for all. The Budget analysis According to a Hindustan Times report, Palkhivala started the tradition of his Budget post-mortem in Bombay’s Green Hotel in 1958. It was sponsored by The Forum of Free Enterprise. In the beginning, only a handful of people turned up to listen to him. However, his expertise, clarity of thought, wit won people over and soon, his Budget analysis became popular among the masses. Soon Palkhivala’s oratory skills became the stuff of legends and the anaylsis was moved from the hotel to Brabourne Stadium to accommodate the growing audiences. Palkhivala never kept his audience waiting and captured their attention by using quotes from English literature. However, he was direct and it is said that within two minutes his audience would know whether Palkhivala approved of the Budget or not. His criticism was gentle. But effective. He never raised his voice and emotion did not replace reason. His style appealed to the rich, poor and middle class alike. His ability to cut through economic jargon and make the Budget understandable to all, earned him mass popularity so much so that famous cricketer Vijay Merchant once happily remarked – “Mr Palkhivala has brought the crowds back to the Brabourne Stadium”. People who know Palkhivala also swore that his punctuality was a trait that people loved. Many reports state that people could literally set their watch by Palkhivala’s time of arrival for the Budget address. In 2016, when he received the book Nani Palkhivala – God’s Gift to India authored by Dr Dharmendra Bhandari, then President Pranab Mukherjee said: “Nani Palkhivala was a giant. And his annual budget speeches became an institution. Unfortunately, no one could carry on this tradition." He added, “Nani Palkhivala was truly a brilliant man. I still remember how, after I delivered my first Budget, he remarked that it fell below his expectations from me. I wrote to him, agreeing with his remark! You don’t see men like that anymore.” Palkhivala continued this practice until 1994. When he stopped delivering his analysis, some believed it was owing to advancing years. But others said that he took the decision as he believed that post-liberalisation there was no need for great analysis. Palkhivala’s other contributions Besides his ability to make dry and mysterious subjects like taxation and economic policy attractive to people from all walks of life, Nani Palkhivala was also a jurist-par-excellence. In 1975, he agreed to defend the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi when the Allahabad High Court overturned her election to the Lok Sabha, on grounds of corruption. He decided to become her lawyer even if he disagreed with many of her economic policies — only because of his belief that the judiciary should not be permitted to dismiss an elected official on what were, in his view, inadequate legal grounds. The lawyer won a stay in Gandhi’s favour. However, when she declared Emergency, he was outraged and decided to withdraw as her lawyer. He engaged in some of the most critical constitutional battles, including that of Kesavananda Bharati vs State of Kerala (1973), where he successfully enunciated the doctrine of the basic structure of the Constitution and its unamendability. He was appointed as the Indian Ambassador to the US in 1977 by then Prime Minister Morarji Desai, a position he held till 1979. In 2002, he passed away. However, he remains one of the greatest Indians to have lived and on this Budget Day, we wish he was around to make the annual financial statement and its jargon easily understandable.

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