Uploaded August 2026 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
India's first budget as an independent nation spent 47% of its money on Defence — not on food, not on refugees. Here's why.
On 26 November 1947, R.K. Shanmukham Chetty walked into Parliament in a suit, carrying a briefcase, and presented the first budget of a free India. The Constituent Assembly was sitting as the country's legislature that day.
It was an interim budget covering just seven and a half months — 15 August 1947 to 31 March 1948 — because the government and the country were both barely three months old.
The numbers:
- Budgeted revenue: ₹171.15 crore
- Budgeted expenditure: ₹197.39 crore
- Net revenue deficit: ₹26.24 crore
- Defence allocation: ₹92.74 crore — roughly 47% of total expenditure
The surprise is where the money did not go. Famine and the rehabilitation of Partition refugees were the two most visible crises of late 1947. Yet the single largest line item was Defence — because India was already at war in Kashmir with the country that had been part of it three months earlier.
This is a high-yield static fact sitting exactly on the Indian Economy and Modern History overlap. Budget-history questions recur in UPSC Prelims and across state PCS papers.
One question for you: India's very first budget came in 1860. Who presented it? Answer in the comments.
More UPSC shorts on Indian Economy, Modern History and Polity — subscribe and turn on notifications.
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India's first budget as an independent nation spent 47% of its money on Defence — not on food, not on refugees. Here's why.
On 26 November 1947, R.K. Shanmukham Chetty walked into Parliament in a suit, carrying a briefcase, and presented the first budget of a free India. The Constituent Assembly was sitting as the country's legislature that day.
It was an interim budget covering just seven and a half months — 15 August 1947 to 31 March 1948 — because the government and the country were both barely three months old.
The numbers:
- Budgeted revenue: ₹171.15 crore
- Budgeted expenditure: ₹197.39 crore
- Net revenue deficit: ₹26.24 crore
- Defence allocation: ₹92.74 crore — roughly 47% of total expenditure
The surprise is where the money did not go. Famine and the rehabilitation of Partition refugees were the two most visible crises of late 1947. Yet the single largest line item was Defence — because India was already at war in Kashmir with the country that had been part of it three months earlier.
This is a high-yield static fact sitting exactly on the Indian Economy and Modern History overlap. Budget-history questions recur in UPSC Prelims and across state PCS papers.
One question for you: India's very first budget came in 1860. Who presented it? Answer in the comments.
More UPSC shorts on Indian Economy, Modern History and Polity — subscribe and turn on notifications.
#Shorts #UPSC #FirstBudget #Budget1947 #IndianEconomy #ShanmukhamChetty #UPSCEconomy #IndianHistory #ModernHistory #UPSCShorts #BudgetHistory #UPSCPreparation #GKFacts #UPSCFacts #Unacademy
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