India's economic history decoded with landmark budgets presented by visionary Finance Ministers

The upcoming Union budget 2017 will be Finance Minister Arun Jaitley’s third full-fledged union budget, is expected to be quite different from the previous ones.

Given the current economic outlook, Post-demonetisation it will be interesting to see what constitutes top priority for government on its agenda when it comes to allocation of funds.

Finance ministry is one of the seminal posts in the government of India. The colonial era before independence saw a plethora of changes in the working system of indian government. Union finance minister is responsible for the fiscal policy of India and s/he also present the annual Union budget in the Parliament, which charts out governments plans for taxation and spending in the coming financial year.

Here is a list of all the Finance Ministers of India since Independence:    

1.RK Shanmukham Chetty

Term: August 15 1947 - 1949

2. John Mathai

Term: 1949-50

3. C.D. Deshmukh

Term: 29 May 1950-1957

4.T.T. Krishnamachari

Term: 1957 - 1958

5.jawaharlal Nehru

Term: 13 February 1958 - 13 March 1958

6.Morarji Desai

Term: 13 March 1958 - 29 August 1953

7. T.T. Krishnamachari

Term: 29 August 1963 - 1965

8. Sachindra Chaudhuri

Term: 1965 - 13 March 1967

9. Morarji Desai

Term: 13 March 1967 - 16 July 1969 

10. Indira Gandhi

Term: 1970-1971

11. YashwantRao Chavan

Term: 1971-1975

12. Chidambaram Subramaniam

Term: 1975-1977

13. Haribhai M. Patel

Term: 24 March 1977- 24 January 1979

14. Charan Singh

Term: 24 January 1979- 28 July 1979

15. Hemvati Nandan Bahuguna

Term: 28 July 1979 - 14 January 1980

16. R.Venkataraman

Term: 14 January 1980-15 January 1982

17. Pranab Mukherjee

Term: 15 January 1982-31 December 1984

18. V.P.Singh

Term: 31 December 1984- 24 January 1987

19. Rajiv Gandhi

Term: 24 January 1987-25 July 1987

20. N.D.Tiwari

Term: 25 July 1987-25 June 1988

21. Shankarrao Chavan

Term: 25 June 1988-2 December 1989

22. Madhu Dandavate

Term: 2 December 1989-10 December 1990

23. Yashwant Sinha

Term: 10 November 1990-21 June 1991

24. Manmohan Singh

Term: 21 June 1991-16 May 1996

25. Jaswant Singh

Term: 16 May 1996-1 June 1996

26. P.Chidambaram

Term: 1 June 1996-21 April 1997

27. I.K.Gujral

Term: 21 April 1997-1 May 1997

28. P.Chidambaram

Term: 1May 1997-19 March 1998

29. Yashwant Sinha

Term: 19 March 1998-1July 2002

30. Jaswant Singh

Term: 1 July 2002-22 May 2004

31. P. Chidambaram

Term: 22 May 2004-30 November 2008

32. Manmohan Singh

Term: 30 November 2008-24 January 2009

33. Pranab Mukherjee

Term: 24 January 2009- 26 June 2012

34. Manmohan Singh

Term: 26 June 2012-31 July 2012

35. P. Chidambaram

Term: 31 July 2012-26 May 2014

36. Arun Jaitley

Term: 26 May 2014 - incumbent