Sitharaman seeks to correct her ‘rampaging elephant’ remark

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Friday went back on her ‘rampaging elephant’ remark hours after she made it during her Budget speech in the context of tax evaders.

“If you give the elephant to eat a bowl of cooked rice, it would take that. But if you don’t give the bowl of rice and the elephant enters the paddy field, it would destroy more than it would eat. You know what I mean,” Sitharaman had said with a smile in the course of her speech.

With the way the remarks were delivered, many people construed them as the Finance Minister threatening the taxpayers with damaging consequences if they failed to pay their taxes for whatever reasons. Some of the MPs too had made a little disapproving noise on the remarks.

However, Sitharaman sought to correct it at the first opportunity available to her. Hours later, speaking with the national broadcaster DD News, Sitharaman said the government was not like the proverbial rampaging elephant.

Without being directly asked by the interviewer about those remarks, the FM broke into a suo motu explanation: “I said if you offer the elephant a bowl of rice, it would be sufficient for it. But if it enters the field it would damage the whole crop. What I mean to say is that the government would be satisfied with whatever is given to it by the taxpayer. But unlike the proverbial elephant, it would not enter into the field and destroy the crop.”

She underlined that the government was “not like the elephant” and it was going to barge into nobody’s space.

“The government would be content if the taxpayers give it its share,” she added.