Budget worries

This was the day of Budget and I was keyed up. Don’t think it had anything to do with the major aspects of the national budget or economy. My sole concern was about the change in prices of one commodity in particular: Cigarettes. All our finance ministers have this wicked habit of raising the taxes of cancer sticks, and being a smoker it sorely affects my personal budget for the year round.

Thank fully, this year, the proposals left out filtered cigarettes and concentrated on non filtered ones. Let the poor suffer. ….!

This is the year of elections in India and the proposals were mild and benign. The main thrust seems to be again on globalization, there is a heated debate on whether this is good for the people in general. From my point of view Mr. Chidambaram has done a fair job of it. There is little option at present. Once we are in the stream we need to swim with it. There is a lull in the economy and another green revolution might be a good idea to cope with it, the experts say, and I can say nothing against it.

In the mean time I am hoping that the state budget will also go easy on my brand of cigarettes!