The Real Hero – An Indian Housewife

This one Sapna Sharma’s editorial article is very interesting. Here Sapna Sharma is telling about how sincerely Indian Housewife manages house economy without the options our Finance Minister have. Finance Minister has options of thinking about an year or mostly five years, they have RBI for printing currency and they can squeeze one section to please another. Indian housewife has to take car of everyone without compromising any family member – even family dog. She is telling, how housewife ( our mother) saves money even after doing so much for their family. This household saving, makes 24% of all saving in India is one of the highest in the world.

In a post-budget interview, the Union finance minister likened India’s growth story to an Indian epic in which all sections of society — scheduled castes, scheduled tribes, minorities, women and children — have a role to play. What he did not mention was the other side of the story, i.e. how each of these sections was contributing to economic growth. Let’s talk of just one section — the housewives — whose contribution, though immense, never gets recognised. While the FM has to worry about the budget only once a year, a housewife has to do it month after month. This is not an easy task because unlike the FM she cannot impose new taxes nor raise the rates of old ones to boost her family income. Nor does she have recourse to an RBI, which can lend endlessly on the strength of freshly printed currency. The FM can afford to squeeze one section to please another. Want to give relief to salaried class by raising the threshold of taxable income? No problem, increase the short-term capital gains tax from 10 to 15 per cent. But can you do that at home? No, because every member is important — even the family dog. But wait. There is one member whose needs can be postponed or even ignored — that of the lady herself.
So, to keep the budget on the rail, the poor thing keeps on denying herself the little pleasures of life. “Trust my intelligence”, said the FM when someone asked him how he would find the means for writing off farmers’ loans. We do. But isn’t that another way of saying that one would cross the bridge when one came to it? And who knows who the FM will be when the bridge must be crossed? A homemaker on the other hand is for life and she must cross all bridges to keep her family afloat. And yet, she not only balances her family budget but, amazingly, also saves something for rainy days! This something, called household savings by the experts, stands at a staggering 24 per cent of all savings in India, and is one of the highest in the world. Without it, it’s impossible to achieve an 8 per cent plus growth rate in the economy. For this alone, the Indian housewife — the unknown soldier of India’s war against poverty — deserves a salute.

Source: Times of India

With the souring price of every item,Indian Housewife only knows how they are managing their house budget.