Much better than expected

The finance minister has done a good balancing act between proprietary and political compulsions of the election. Although the opposition have already termed the budget as an election gimmick, there are certain things that a lot of us are forgetting in the budget bashing.
These budgets are political animals and we can’t really wish them away. Yes, certain sops like merging 50% of the DA of central government employees with their basic salary will cost the government exchequer, there is a slew of measures that has been avoided by the FM.
The FM might have taken a lot more populist measures, which could have put a backbreaking burden on the exchequer and the government that takes over. Measures like increasing the basic tax exemption, or even worse, constituting a sixth pay commission and revising the pay upwards (remember what the UF government did).
The other measures, which are being criticised, are not really poll sops but sound economic decisions, which have been taken in the wake of the boom in the economy. For instance, the cut in customs duty, excise duties have been on things like air travel, computers and cell phones.
These are not even items of daily consumption and a fall in their prices is unlikely to help the government in the poll season. One would think that the FM would be talking more on lines of agriculture sops, farm subsidies, or subsidies on LPG or kerosene to woo the ‘common man’ to vote for him.

Further, the government has taken lot of development oriented decisions in the interim budget. It has earmarked an amount of Rs 50,000 crore for core projects and another Rs 25,000 crore for defence modernisation. One would have thought these “not-so-urgent� expenses would have been sacrificed on the altar of elections.
In the end it is only fair to say that keeping in mind the political implications of this budget, it could have been much worse than it was.