The King’s Speech may have won four Oscars but our Finance Minister’s budget speech in Parliament has for now just won a soft round of applause. Given the pessimism before the budget one is reminded of ‘Inception’ – where the aim was planting of an idea into a target's subconscious. To some extent, knowingly or unknowingly, the idea of low expectations was indeed well planted into the minds of the conscious and sub-conscious investors.
The former finance minister Yashwant Sinha may argue that there is Deception in the way the fiscal deficit is presented.
Even the worst of pessimists didn’t really expect any Black Swan event in the budget. The FM would have got a good number of likes on The Social Network, given the encouraging and disciplined social sector spending announced part of the government’s inclusive growth agenda.
I read today about the Pranab Paradox in ET which states – He’s Smart, He’s Powerful, but never a Game Changer. With six decades of experience I am sure the FM is The Fighter we need at the moment to keep our engines of growth – consumption and investment running.
Now that the speech is over and the applause has ended, the government in general and the FM’s team in particular have to do a great ‘Inside Job’ to deliver on the promises made.
Not many are really convinced about the arithmetic. The disinvestment target appears stretched and with crude realities confronting us, the drop in subsidies and lower expenditure may tend to make one believe that the FM is in a different world like Alice in Wonderland.
And like AR Rahman’s If I Rise, which got a loud applause at the Oscar’s, lets hope that improvement in the macro environment and a change in sentiment in the coming months gives us A Better World.