new delhi there are just 10 more days to go for the state budget and delhi government babus are poring over no not the irving fishers and the joseph stiglitzs of this world but vidurniti kautilyas arthashastra and gurupurans of the old worldand the idea is not to incorporate the financial and administrative principles laid down in these texts in the governments functioning taking a cue from union finance minister p chidambaram who has been quoting tamil poet thiruvalluvar in his budget speech for many years now and railway minister laloo prasad yadav whose budget speeches have been laced liberally with hindi and urdu couplets the state government officials are in hot pursuit of that elusive sanskrit quotation that will not just give dr a k walias budget speech that flavour of erudition but is also easy on the punjabispeaking finance ministers tonguethe services of one official who is conversant in the language have been requisitioned and officials are busy choosing the right lines from a several pages long list of quotations that this person has drawn up his job right now is to read out the suitable quotations to senior officials and explain their meaning among the quotes that have been lined up for final approval are ones that say that the kings rulers foremost duty is to collect money for good governance and those that exhort money collection as a noble endeavour in the system of governance many have been ruled out on the ground that there are too many inordinately long words for the fms comfortthe criteria for choosing are clear enough explained an official it cannot be too long because sanskrit is such a complicated language to read that unless one has had some sort of formal exposure it is difficult plus it has to be related to the governments function of filling up the exchequer and the importance of a sound financial status in a good administration the source too matters he added if we quote from kautilya that will obviously have an impressive effectincidentally dr walia in his budget speech in 2007 had quoted from arthashastra a line which means all undertakings depend upon finance hence foremost attention shall be paid to treasury the choice of sanskrit officials say was obvious as there is this sense of exploring ones roots in quoting from a language that is believed to be the mother of most indian languagesabantikaghoshtimesgroupcom