Finance Minister goes bilingual for the first time, presents Budget 2018 in 'Hinglish'

This was perhaps the first time in Indian history when a Union Finance Minster included Hindi in the Budget speech.

(Photo: PTI)

New Delhi: Diverging from the tradition of presenting the Budget in English, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Thursday created a history by presenting Union Budget 2018 in neither entirely in English nor Hindi but in 'Hinglish'. While presenting the budget, whenever he was referring to schemes for poor, Jaitley was redirecting from English to Hindi. But a very genuine question raised by people on social media was that why he felt that all the poor across the country understand 'Hindi'. As per Census 2011, around 30% of the population declared Hindi as their mother tongue. In the past 4 occasions Jaitley had always presented the budget in English, but this time he took a new turn. It is believed to be a strategic attempt to attract the common masses of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s core constituency in India’s northern states. This even shows the prevalence of a new language 'Hinglish' these days. Well, his historic Hinglish speech attracted a lot of attention on social media, netizens have wasted no time in giving their outlook for the selection of Hinglish while announcing Union Budget 2018. Check it out some reactions.  

A budget speech in Hinglish - aaiyo!

— anshutandon (@unshoe) February 1, 2018

@arunjaitley @FinMinIndia Mr finance minister present your budget either in English or in Hindi It's sounding more of "Hinglish" and losing its connectivity to the common man — Sachin Y Karlekar (@KarlekarSachin) February 1, 2018

Bilingual Budget? Hearing for the first time. Now Union Budget in Hinglish. What an idea 👏 इसे कहते है 'एक तीर से दो निशाने' 😉 #Budget2018 #UnionBudget2018

— Shivangi Thakur (@thakur_shivangi) February 1, 2018

Social media users even pointed out when Jaitley was really uncomfortable with Hindi.  

Seems @arunjaitley is not at all comfortable with Hindi. Language wise this will go down as the most opportunistic budget speech! — nikhil wagle (@waglenikhil) February 1, 2018

Mr.Jaitley is visibly struggling with some of the words. #HindiBudget

— Sumanth Raman (@sumanthraman) February 1, 2018

Some more...  

Interesting difference in style and content in the Hindi and English sections of the Budget speech. Focus in Hindi sections: women (LPG connections), farmers, sanitation. Also more conversational, less new schemes, more restatements/extensions of existing ones in Hindi section — Mihir Sharma (@mihirssharma) February 1, 2018

Budget in Hinglish is great trick played by FM & PM Directly connected half of population and convey message 👍 Liberals gonna cry about Hindi rather than finding faults 😂#Budget2018

— wittycatty (@wittycatty) February 1, 2018