The best budgets in the world

Union Finance and Corporate Affairs Minister Nirmala Sitharaman addresses the media after interacting with stakeholders with regard to the Union Budget 2023-24, at a hotel in Lower Parel on February 4. File pic/Ashish Raje

This year marks the ninth anniversary of me not tuning in to the annual budget proceedings from New Delhi. I stopped listening soon after I realised that, after decades of mismanagement, we were finally in the world's safest hands. This is it, I told myself at the time; the most intelligent, most qualified people from the worlds of economics and finance have finally been given their place under the sun, and we no longer need to worry about our money. That sentiment has only grown stronger in the years since, which is why I was sure this year's budget was outstanding as usual. I didn't need to listen in to find out.

There have been a few mixed reports about what this means for the common man, which amuses me because I have never seen anything change drastically for the common man in all my years on this planet. Yes, we have a metro and monorail now, but we also earn more and pay more for everything our parents managed on a lot less, so things appear to have balanced out in the larger scheme of things.

This isn't a complaint, merely a declaration of how things stand and why the budget really has no impact on anyone except the very poor or very rich. And, let's be honest, when was the last time any of us stopped to think about either of those people?

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I don't know if this year's budget promised pretty much the same things last year's budget did, but the face of our country is set to change either way thanks to some massive new allocations I was informed about. There's a ‘Green Growth' priority sector, for instance, which promises to focus on green hydrogen, clean energy storage and transmission. None of us who have access to the Internet and can type the letters ‘AQI' may know what those words mean, but it sounds like an important thing and I'm pretty sure asthma will soon be a thing of the past.

There's also Rs 35,000 crore reportedly being invested in energy security and energy transition, which sounds a lot like the Green Growth thing and probably isn't, but still sounds amazing. It seems as if we're heading towards a great deal of energy and, who knows, the massively inflated electricity bills we have been receiving over the past couple of years may disappear too.

Also on the cards for the coming year are plans to revive 50 additional airports, helipads, water aero drones, and advanced landing grounds. I have no idea what water aero drones or advanced landing grounds are, but I'm sure they are important and will make all our lives better in some way or another.

There's a lot of positive change lined up for the technology sector too, in keeping with our government's ambitious plans of turning this entire country into a cluster of Smart Cities any day now. Three centres of excellence for artificial intelligence are to be established in top educational institutions, for one, presumably as soon as these top institutions have been identified and cleared of the usual anti-national elements. There are also 100 laboratories in engineering institutions that will be tasked with developing applications using 5G services.

This confused me at first, because I was told a majority of our engineering graduates are deemed unemployable by companies abroad. Then, I realised it was a masterstroke as usual, hinging upon foreign graduates coming in to develop these apps, inadvertently boosting the tourism sector and creating what is commonly referred to as a ‘win-win' situation.

The list of allocations went on and on, and I'm sure it will take us all a year to understand how life has become easier, just in time for the 2024 budget announcement. It is an embarrassment of riches, and I have never been more grateful. If there is one thing I worry about, however, it's how our economists and other financial experts spend so much time making us all richer, that they sometimes fail to notice how this may incite the jealousy of countries that aren't doing as well as we are. What if these countries point fingers towards our undeniably honest business practices?

As a case in point, someone recently pointed me to a firm named Hindenburg Research. I haven't looked at what they've been saying about Indian companies, but I'm pretty sure they're wrong because we have never been known as a nation of scammers. Those who commit fraud always manage to fly out.

When he isn't ranting about all things Mumbai, Lindsay Pereira can be almost sweet. He tweets @lindsaypereira
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The views expressed in this column are the individual's and don't represent those of the paper.