As everybody awaits for Nirmala Sitharaman to present the Union Budget on February 1, there would be huge expectations on the change in policies amid the slowdown in the economy due to the pandemic.
But do you know who created the first-ever budget in India? It was none other than a Scotsman called James Wilson in 1860, who was also known for making the Standard Chartered bank. He was also the founder of a well-known magazine named The Economist.
Born in Hawick, a small border town in Scotland in 1805, Wilson first came to India on November 28, 1859, and he was appointed finance member in Viceroy Lord Canning’s council in undivided India and the British government ruling India then was reeling under a huge financial crisis.
Wilson also introduced the income tax act which was vehemently opposed by Zamindars and therefore, it gave birth to a huge controversy. In terms of ideology, he was a liberal and strong proponent of the policy of laissez-faire. Wilson was also seen as someone with a deep knowledge of how the market worked.
“He [Wilson] introduced for the first time in India a financial budget framed upon the English model – inspired the public mind with fresh confidence – brought together the threads of finance which had been broken and scattered by a military and political convulsion – stimulated the operations of the Military Finance Commission to review the numerous branches of civil expenditure – reviewed the existing system of audit and account – besides discharging the multifarious duties devolving on a finance minister and a member of the general government,” Sabyashachi Bhattacharya quotes Wilson’s understudy and later successor, Sir Richard Temple, in the book ‘Financial Foundations of the British Raj.
