It was during Chidambaram's tenure, Government talked about using a portion of forex reserves for infra structural development based on Chinese model. Infact a corpus of Rs.10000 Crores was created to be administetered by Infra structure leasing Co.

It has become fashionable to quote subsidies as a percentage of GDP which no lay man understands. On the last count the subsidies were around 100000 crores and could swell if the food security bill of UPA-II is implemented. Attempts to target subsidies , cut leakages throgh technological innovations of Aadhar variety notwithstanding, the revenue deficit is always cited as due to ballooning subsidies. It is only partially true. Large scale e governance measures could bring transaction costs substantially which Governments do not actually attempt doing.

This time Pranab Mukherjee has chosen to expand the service tax base and also raise the tax rates for Excise and Service Taxes to mop in additional revenues of 40000crores or so. The Excise rate has gone up to 12% when there is talk of 15% GST being rolled out which leaves only 3% for state taxes. Industry claims that stiluli has increased GDP which is farce. The revenue voluntarily foregone exceeds the subsidy budget and yet the Industry always like Oliver Twist asks for more.

The exempted goods have also been under the excise net albeit with 2% rate( it was earlier 1%) beofre Raja Chellaih report which recommended taxing services, the governments ran huge revenue deficits and even now, with large scale no sharable revenue in the form of service tax, budgetary deficits are alarming. Pro poor measures are cited to hide inefficiency and mis governance.

Disinvestment is not likely to fill in coffers of Government to fill in revenue gaps as expected as the recent ONGCfiasco will testify when LIC had to bail out th issue. There is a strong private sector lobby which is awaiting to garner public wealth for a song. So much for the much trumpeted auction route. CAGmay take note of this. Buy back of Goverment shares could bring in some money but that will choke capex plans for cash rich PSUs.

This budget is lacklasture and is not going to either promote investment nor create employment both of which only will sustain the economy in the long run