Congress For Common Man | BUDGET 2010 SPECIAL

Back to home this weekend. Saturday, 27th Feb, 2010, it is unusually cold morning in Nagpur where it’s usually hotter. It is 7 a.m. & Aai has prepared my favourite Tetley’s Ginger & Lemon, along with it is the THE TIMES OF INDIA, which reads budget 2010 special edition. Everyone here knows that the Annual Indian Budget is a dummy edition of the country’s finances prepared by the Hon’ble Finance Minister of India, still, the newspaper vendors manage to sell around 50,000 copies of THE ET special BUDGET edition till night 10’o’ clock here. Browsing through the newspaper, I thoroughly read the views of CELEBRITIES especially the likes of Kareena Kapoor, Shahrukh, Aamir, Hrithik, Deepika,etc. & everyone seemed to be sub-normally satisfied with the budget, except some excellences viz. K M Birla, Yashwant Sinha (of course in opp.), Mamta Banerjee, Left, etc. who were partially satisfied. Then I went on reading the typical “As a consumer, As an investor....” format of the paper.

The overall budget was neither surprising nor satisfying. Remember what INC had said:”Congress ka haath AAM AADMI ke SAATH”! It seems the Congress’ hand is not for helpin’ but strangling the common man a.k.a. Aam Aadmi! Thanks to Pranab Da, I mean Mr. Pranab Mukherjee, Hon’ble Finance Minister of India, the curbs on income tax, only for people earning more than Rs. 3 lakhs per annum, haven’t enough eased the economic burdens of the Common Man. Already fighting a 20% inflation in food prices, the increase in exise duty by about 2%, & much talked increase in ESSENTIAL fuel prices, have already tightened the rope around Common Man’s neck! Calculating the finances of a citizen earning around 5 lakhs INR annually gets a relief of around 20,600 INR through annual income tax, but the increase in Service Tax, Customs, Excise duty, & fuel prices have hardly left any space for more saving. That citizen would be lucky if he’s to stay in any metro, or semi-metros of India, as he can easily save excess fuel costs by using public transport & miss on his own vehicle giving a much relief o the environment, but there is no proper public transport in other places in India. The heavy price rise is to dampen the domestic demands of products en-route making a difficult economy. The intention of lowering income tax i.e. to enhance buying can thus be a spoilt sport due to this price rise. There is also much less concentration on agriculture, rural areas & environment. The UPA government has played foul with the common man, it is now upto them to decide the next government which is far away though. Not just lack of social security, the common
man as been denied financial security also. The 6th pay commission has also not been too effective.

Anyway, there is joy at the other bay. The Corporates are enjoying this budget with Sensex rising 415 pts day’s high. The much expected cut in Fiscal deficit, reduction in corporate tax surcharge are many of the reasons for B-persons to cheer. The budget can make re-think the corporates especially NRI’s to invest in Motherland instead because of the luring juicy returns India can offer, as the West is yet to recover from the Economic DOOMSDAY!
2007EvolutionLtd.