Budget 2014 - a melange of populism, pragmatism, prudence and propaganda NDAs first budget after a 10 year gap on the wake of achche din promises was a keenly awaited event by both the aspiring optimists as well as the never-say-die cynics and at the end of it, both had to settle with some disappointment, as Jaitley played a very smart catch-me-if-you-can card to both the groups by giving a budget for all and appeasement to none! Most of the UPA programs were either retained, enhanced or renamed, with a smarter allocation of funds to many new initiatives for every key jargon uttered by PM Modi in his inaugural speech in the Parliament, though people picked up what they want to, be it Madrasa modernisation or Statue building. However, some refreshingly new initiatives to boost talent and skill development, sectors like tourism, river linking, sanitation, renewable energy, health care insurance, rehab of displaced Kashmiri migrants, border strengthening, and tech support for agri sector had gone over the head of those myopic critics. It would be interesting to see the progress made out of these baby steps in coming years. On fiscal consolidation, he played safe by sticking to his predecessors target and promising for bettering it in future. Considering this is the first budget and too many balancing acts to perform, that was quite understandable, but the concerns regarding price rise would remain given the rising oil prices and already deficient monsoons. Besides, the many bitter pills that were being touted or threatened were either conspicuous by their absence or coated abundantly with sugar. One would hope what was missing in words would be seen in action to rein in the deficits and inflation in the coming days. If any, the most disappointing aspect of the budget was an absence of boldness, in particular, on reforms. Of course more headroom was given for FDI in insurance, defence and all, and a pompous disinvestment figure was announced albeit the miserable failure of the previous government to actually achieve the numbers. But on retro taxes, he did play very safe and smart by announcing a high level committee to scrutinise the cases, rather than an outright rollback. Having said that, the approach has been positive and more importantly, the proposed advance ruling mechanism in the cases of tax disputes is a welcome move that should avoid a lot of litigation. In essence it was a budget with the same arithmetics but different allocation with more emphasis being given on many small and new schemes, that were being laboriously laid out making it the longest budget speech ever in our history that made the FM take a break and forced him to sit and sweat! So it was quite funny to hear the UPA leaders like MMS saying there was no roadmap seen in the budget. Forget building roads and roadmaps, those who dug up existing roads saying this was the proverbial scripture quoting. Not to leave out a wide eyed Rahul Gandhi who was asked to sit alongside by his chiding mom on the front row, after the catnap of the previous day! Arun Jaitley is an ardent cricket lover and has been the head of DCA. He chose to open the innings more conservatively, through solid defence, good leaves, seeing the shine off the ball, and some well placed carpet drives instead of a typical Sehwag style opener. Given the overwhelming mandate, perhaps a few sixers could have been hit, but then this is a long innings match, so let us wait and see in the next sessions!
Posted on: Fri, 11 Jul 2014 05:50:02 +0000
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