Sixteen Union Budgets, presented by four finance ministers under different regimes since economic reforms began in July 1991 capture the story of a massive transformation in India's economic landscape in a manner no other event can possibly do.

As the accompanying charts show, this is a story of India's fiscal reforms, the trajectory of which was never in doubt, despite minor aberrations.

Manmohan Singh, Yashwant Sinha and Palaniappan Chidambaram with five Budgets each (Chidambaram presented three under the present government and two under the United Front government) and Jaswant Singh with one have all striven hard --  and succeeded significantly --  to reduce the fiscal deficit, improve the tax-to-GDP ratio and widen the tax net.

In terms of controlling the fisc, Manmohan Singh's record has been better than others. He took charge of the economy, when the fiscal deficit was over eight per cent of GDP. When he left North Block, the deficit had fallen to 4.1 per cent.

Chidambaram comes a close second. In his five Budgets, he failed to match fisc projections only once (assuming that he cuts the deficit to below 3.8 per cent in 2006-07). Jaswant Singh, too, did well by reducing the fiscal deficit to 4.5 per cent in 2003-04. Yashwant Sinha failed to make much of an impression on the fisc, ending the year with a higher deficit in four of his five Budgets.

The long journey in these 16 years is also evident from the widening of the tax net. Against only four million tax payers in 1990, the income-tax base now is over 33 million. The more than eight-fold increase in the taxpayer base has also meant that personal income-tax collections maintained double-digit growth rates (between 12 and 34 per cent) in 14 of the 16 Budgets. 

Income-tax collections declined only in one year -- in 1997-98 under Chidambaram, when income-tax revenue dropped six per cent. In 2001-02 also, income-tax collections grew by less than one per cent. And that was under Yashwant Sinha.

For Sinha, 2001-02 was a particularly bad Budget. That was the year when gross tax collections fell 0.81 per cent - the only time in the last 16 years that revenues actually fell. 

Manmohan Singh began his stint as finance minister with gross tax revenues estimated at 10.3 per cent of GDP in 1991-92. It dropped to 8.25 per cent in 1998-99 (with Yashwant Sinha's first Budget).  Sinha could not manage to touch the nine per cent mark in his tax collection effort and the real recovery began with Jaswant Singh at 9.19 per cent in 2003-04. Since then, the ratio has been improving and in 2006-07, it is all set to cross the eleven per cent mark.

However, the big difference  - a positive one at that -  is in the composition of the tax revenue. In 1991-92, indirect taxes amounted to about eight per cent of GDP, with direct taxes (personal income tax and corporation tax) as low as 2.32 per cent.  In 2006-07, direct taxes as a percentage of GDP will go up to 5.14 per cent and indirect taxes (customs, excise and service tax) will stay at only 5.6 per cent of GDP. 

In terms of cracking down on subsidies, the performance has been mixed. Manmohan Singh maintained a tight vigil on subsidies, even managing to bring down expenditure on them in his second Budget. Jaswant Singh kept a tight leash and Yashwant Sinha allowed them double-digit growth in three of his five Budgets.

Chidambaram's first stint as finance minister under the United Front government saw subsidies grow by 22 and 13 per cent in the two years for which he presented the Budget. But in his current stint, he has been as prudent as Manmohan Singh, succeeding in reducing subsidies in two years. On the whole, subsidies as a percentage of GDP have fallen from 1.87 per cent to 1.12 per cent in these 16 years.

The big failure was on the capital expenditure front, where in as many as four years the budgetary allocations showed a decline.  Worse, as a percentage of GDP, the government's capital expenditure declined from 4.46 per cent to 1.85 per cent over the 16-year period.

The 16 Budgets saw some major tax initiatives. Manmohan Singh raised the corporation tax rate to 45 per cent in his first Budget. In subsequent years, the tax rates were brought down and Chidambaram in 1997 slashed the rate to 30 per cent, a rate most of his successors have stuck to, though some tinkered with it by levying surcharges or cesses on it.

Personal income-tax rates have also stabilised at a three-slab structure of 10-20-30 per cent. Exemptions have also been pruned during these years.

A major innovation was the introduction of the service tax in 1994 by Manmohan Singh. In 1994-95, the government collected a paltry Rs 407 crore (Rs 4.07 billion) from service tax and this year it would be Rs 34,500 crore (Rs 345 billion), a growth rate matched by no other tax. And yet, service tax still accounts for less than a per cent of GDP.

Yashwant Sinha's main contribution to tax reform was on the indirect taxes front. He began the process of reducing the number of excise rates. Eventually, these have now converged to a Cenvat rate of 16 per cent, with a couple of exceptions.

Rationalisation of excise rates has also meant a lowering of the tax incidence on companies. One indication of this: excise collections account for 2.9 per cent of GDP today, against 4.3 per cent when reforms began in 1991-92. 

The 16 Budgets of the reform years suggest that there really are no losers. It is possible to quarrel with the pace of tax reforms or the failure to control expenditure. But all the four finance ministers in this period have displayed a unity in commitment on the basic issues that none of their colleagues in other departments or ministries in the central government have shown so far.