Singing the budget's praises
With a few exceptions, the editorials lavished praise on Arun Jaitley's budget.
Reading them, DARIUS NAKHOONWALA felt they could have been written by Mr Jaitley himself.
You don’t say!
Darius Nakhoonwala
Few things are easier in life than writing editorials on budgets. Just about anyone can do it because, it seems to me, the writer only has to comment in a binary way – good idea, bad idea – about the various proposals that a budget contains.
If he or she wants to sound learned, a half thought out sentence giving a reason can be added. But that is optional.
This time was no different. Every edit writer, with the exception of the Telegraph and the Indian Express, broke into song.
The Telegraph blew a loud raspberry at the Modi-Jaitley duo. The tone and content were just right. After observing that “No Union budget in recent years had raised so many expectations about so many different things” the edit had this to say: “Arun Jaitley ended his budget speech by saying that while a super budget was expected with big-bang reforms, one should not forget that India is a slow moving giant. There is a feeling of déjà vu: the sense that one has heard these kinds of budget speeches before. It does reflect the continuity of India's democratic polity. It also signals that the giant will become nimble sometime in the indefinite future. A young and restless nation will now have to wait and see how slow is this giant's sloth.”
The Indian Express was more forthright. It said the budget “adds up to a fairly reformist and forward-looking budget.Where it falls short is in coming out with any near-term measures to revive growth and investment…This budget’s test will come in about six months from now. If investments fail to pick up, there would be no alternative, then, to taking the tough decisions.” Exactly right.
The rest of the papers, including the pink ones who should have known better, sighed with quiet admiration. It was as if they had been coached by the Finance Ministry.
The Hindustan Times made an important point which others missed. “By all measures, this is probably the last budget as we know it. If things work to plan, India’s finance minister will have ceded a significant part of his discretionary power over indirect tax rates by the time the next budget is presented. A single tax on goods and services across the land would be set by a collegium of ministers from the states. Besides, the 14th Finance Commission recommendations of sharing 42% of central tax revenues with states had made the elbow room in the treasury that much tighter. Union finance minister Arun Jaitley thus had to scour for that extra rupee to be wrung out of the coffers to balance the books.”
The Business Standard wrote an exculpatory edit, saying poor Jaitley, he has had so much to cope with. After re-writing the speech in edit format, the paper concluded that “There are too many cheques written with future dates on them - rewriting corporate taxation, introducing as many as nine new laws, implementing the report of the expenditure control committee and implementing the General Anti-Avoidance Rules, or GAAR. Also, the finance minister has needlessly fiddled with specific excise duty rates, and introduced a divergence between excise and service tax rates when they should have moved up together in preparation for the introduction of the GST next year.”
Mint was not much better. But it did point out that “Analysing a budget is sometimes compared to the way the blind men of Hindoostan try to describe the lumbering elephant in front of them by touching it.” Indeed it is. That’s why it is necessary to tell the reader whether it will work or not.
The Financial Express started well. “Given the build-up, finance minister Arun Jaitley was always going to disappoint. Not surprisingly, after a great deal of volatility, the Sensex closed lower than it opened….the Bank Nifty, though, soared.”
Then it lapsed into hosannas.“In itself, the Budget was not just well-crafted it had a lot of imaginative proposals which added up to what would have been a credible reforms pitch in a normal year. But this was not an ordinary year, this was not an ordinary Budget, and this was not an ordinary government, and it did not have an ordinary mandate.” Enough said.
The Economic Times went silly. It counted the number of words and the proportion spent on different subjects. “In his near-18,000-word Budget speech, Arun Jaitley spent 4.7% on developing infrastructure, 3.9% on digitising India, 1.9% on farmers and 1.6% on the middle class. But 7% of the Budget speech — the biggest single subject — was about black money and the harsh penalties that the owners of this cash would have to pay.”
The Hindu Business Line wrote a standard no-frills edit that paraphrased the budget speech. It did point out something others completed failed to notice: “In this seemingly comprehensive package of supply and demand driven measures, there is a bewildering omission: agriculture.” Attaboy!
The Hindu went gaga, and on the front page. Why, no one can tell. “Finance Minister Arun Jaitley may just have managed to achieve what some of his predecessors attempted but failed. In a performance that is striking in its imaginative balance, Mr. Jaitley has deftly reconciled the interests of business and the markets on the one hand and that of the masses, or aam aadmi, if you will, on the other, and all this without taking his eyes off the fiscal deficit ball.” Oh, dear, how embarrassing!
The Times of India also gushed like a silly school girl who has touched Shah Rukh Khan’s coat. “…the elephant has broken into a run and it’s headed in the right direction… the Budget has many positive features, of which clarity is the most important. It’s not the big-bang Budget many were expecting. But judged by the standards of preceding budgets over the last decade or so, it’s a solid one.” Solid? As opposed to liquid or gasified? Come on!
The Pioneer started with the sentence “If the Union Budget for 2015-16 can be explained in a single sentence, it is this: The Budget has taken care of the pressing needs of the common man while at the same time providing an impetus to corporate growth — and by extension to employment and wealth creation.”
I wonder if the Finance Minister wrote it – and indeed the rest of it. “It may be said that not all the pressing needs of the aam aadmi have been addressed or that not everything in the wish-list of the corporate sector has been met. But then, no Budget has ever done that, nor will any future one be able to meet expectations one hundred per cent.”
Such articles are only possible because of your support. Help the Hoot. The Hoot is an independent initiative of the Media Foundation and requires funds for independent media monitoring. Please support us. Every rupee helps.