NEW DELHI, July 5 (Xinhua) -- India's first full-time federal finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Friday broke a British-era norm by not carrying a brown leather briefcase while moving inside the parliament to present the general budget.
Instead she was seen carrying a bright red four-fold ledger known in Hindi language as bahi-khata.
Until now all the finance ministers, mostly her male counterparts, have used brown leather briefcases to carry budget documents in the past. However, Sitharaman carrying the ledger marked her presence while moving to present her maiden budget in the parliament.
The four-fold red cloth folder is often seen in the hands of Indian traders.
In the post budget press conference Sitharaman described briefcase a "colonial hangover".
"I though it was high time that India moved out of the British hangover, so it is good enough for us to come and do something our own and this was easy for me to carry also, very Indian," Sitharaman told an inquisitive reporter, who questioned why she ditched the brown briefcase.
Sitharaman's chief economic adviser Krishnamurthy Subramanian said the ledger symbolised a "departure from the slavery of western thought".
"It (bahi-khata) is in Indian tradition. It symbolizes our departure from slavery of Western thought. It is not a budget but a 'bahi khata'(ledger)," Subramanian said.
Friday's budget was the first budget of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's second term.
The finance minister lowered the fiscal deficit target to 3.3 percent for the current fiscal from the earlier estimate of 3.4 percent of the GDP.
Sitharaman said India will become a 3 trillion U.S. dollars economy in the current fiscal year, and was aiming at becoming 5 trillion U.S. dollars economy in the next few years.
She announced several measures including a housing boost for the middle-class, incentives for new start-ups and measures to improve infrastructure, besides relaxing the norms in Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in sensitive areas like aviation, insurance and media to boost the economy.
Sitharaman was India's defence minister in the last Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) led government in Narendra Modi's cabinet.
