As always, a destructive budget by Chidu

While experts praise Chidambaran for his 8 budgets that he has presented so far, they have praised him, as they have little option to do so, because he is in power. But, all, according to me have been the worst budgets, as far as the nation is concerned.

He promised a lot a month ago to bring in FDI and clear all draconian tax laws. That’s not all - he personally went on a visit abroad, reassuring foreign companies that retrospective taxation will be removed and GAAR would be neutralized.

In fact, not only has he done nothing about these, but he has also introduced more draconian laws and given more powers to the Taxman without any clarity. So the Taxman can harass companies like Shell and even Indian companies, at their own discretion or whims and fancies. He has always been very good at confusing the nation.

He is deviously intelligent - while he was expected to bring populist measures before election, he didn’t do that just to satisfy the rating agencies Fitch, Moody’s and S&P. Also only one other thing he has done is to bring down fiscal deficit to 5.3, again, to avoid a downgrade to junk status from the rating agencies, which his party cannot afford before elections.

The one vote-catching idea which largely went unnoticed was to give a special status to Bihar. This weans away a large ally of NDA and adds one more to UPA, besides Mulayam and Mayawati.

He will bring in Direct Cash Transfer and other vote-catching schemes later during the year and will do many things through the backdoor, which he is adept at doing. But none will benefit -  neither the nation nor aam aadmi. It will only benefit his party.

The 5.3 fiscal deficit figure was pure mathematical jugglery. He has also done nothing to spur growth. Even the domestic big business houses are not investing because of bottlenecks created by UPA’s own ministries, like environment, land acquisition, coal, etc.

He could have created single window clearance for all infrasturucture projects, thereby creating tremendous employment. Although CCI has been created, but I don’t know what it is doing.

While vast sums from corruption scandals like CWG, Spectrum allocation, Coal blocks allocation and now Augusta Westland helicopter acquisition, if recovered, even partially, could have vastly reduced budget deficit in real terms. Not only nothing has been done but also, all scamsters are out of jail - Kalmadi, Raja and a few days back Madhur Koda has also got bail and they are walking freely with great impunity. It is due to the fact that these people are only fronts, the real scamsters are the big fish in Delhi.

While Sonia Gandhi and Sheila Dixit, both women are silent on rapes of women in Delhi happening right in their own city, the PM is a mute spectator to scams happening right under his nose.

With such a government we don’t need Pakistan and China to destroy us. We are doing it ourselves.