Chennai: In her second budget speech on Saturday, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman borrowed from Tamil poet Thiruvalluvar’s Thirukkural to explain what defines a good country.
Highlighting Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s success across all sectors, Sitharaman said: “If Thiruvalluvar identified the five jewels of a good country, those five jewels are the ones which PM Modi is now addressing through his programme.”
The poem she quoted was No. 738 of Thirukkural — “Piniyinmai Selvam Vilaivinpam Emam Aniyenpa Naattiv Vaindhu” — which means a country's five jewels are unfailing health, fertility, joy, security and wealth.
This is not the first time the FM has channelled her Tamil connect. A native of Tamil Nadu, during her maiden budget speech in July last year, Sitharaman quoted from scriptures from the state.
The pre-historic anthology (believed to have been written between 1st Century BC and 3rd Century BC or more than 2,000 years ago) deals with the advice given to kings of Chola, Chera and Pandya regimes on various issues such as war, ethics, morality and charity.
The verse she had quoted — ‘Yaanai pugundha nilam’ (the field that an elephant enters) is attributed to Pisiranthaiyar as advice on taxation given to a Pandya king, Arivudai Nambi.
“A few pounds of rice from paddy that is harvested from a small piece of land would suffice for an elephant. But what if the elephant itself enters the field and starts eating? What it eats would be far lesser than what it would trample over,” she explained to puzzled MPs from across the country who were listening to her words in Tamil.
This was the reference that Sitharaman made to direct taxes, implying that the Centre wouldn’t be like an elephant in a paddy field, needlessly taking more than what it needs, and ultimately destroying hard-earned savings in the process.
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