She was scuttling along the ridges of the field, balancing the day's collection of fresh-cut grass gingerly atop her head.

The screeching of tyres cut through the subdued cacophony of crickets among the dense cane and the men with television cameras and mikes jumped down from the van. "What does the budget mean to you?" hollered an eager beaver journalist, desperate to complete his quota of sound bites.

She stood transfixed for a while, then wiping her streaming nose with the back of her hand, began to walk away into the dusk.

"The budget," persisted our man, then more gently, "have you heard of the budget?" He had to be content with the brief shake of the head, before she disappeared in the direction of the village.

Union finance minister Yashwant Sinha announced on Wednesday that her tribe had decreased from 36 per cent of the population in 1993-94 to 26 per cent now.

Six years later a rupee earned from sale of fresh fodder is seen disappearing much faster, but she does not know why. If a television journalist was to tell her that a man in a sky blue suit reading a speech in the rajdhani was somewhat responsible for raising kerosene prices this year, she would have smiled tolerantly.

Even her more enlightened cousins would not quite believe that the pinching purse was part of the finance minister's largesse left over from last year.

If you trust The Economist, consumer prices at home were 3.5 per cent higher in December. The finance minister said inflation was four per cent in the year gone by, if you ignore the rise in the energy prices.

That's funny. Number crunchers do say that the inflation rate was being stoked primarily by energy prices. Either way, everything (well, almost) costs a wee bit more this year than they did last year. The pundits will tell you that governments take care of all that, by providing for an allowance called the variable dearness allowance (VDA).The VDA shores up the pay packet periodically to cope up with rising prices.

The roughly 50 lakh working women in the country will find that hard to believe, during those visits to the store.

That thin, hazy line between theoretical perfection and market reality does not blur easily.

A great many files need to be tossed around before visits to the bank, facsimile services, telegrams, postage and the photograph for a drivers' licence or passport begins to cost more. It should happen nonetheless.

Sunglasses, new mattresses and those fake sparklers necessary to keep pace with the real stuff flaunted by the Joneses (imitation jewellery, don't you know?) turns dear at once.

The wide-awake on February 28 hear Mr Yashwant Sinha say that he would discourage the consumption of some of those things that were not particularly good (for the body or soul?). No cigarettes, said he, slapping a 15 per cent-excise surcharge on the sticks.

As an afterthought, he took away the match box too, hurling it out of the list of small-scale items that had an excise concession.

Forget foreign liquor at duty-free prices, said he, imposing a countervailing duty on your favourite brand of Scotch or sparkling wine. No imported cars, either, the FM admonished. He forbade sugar too, even though food minister Shanta Kumar has stocks enough to last out a couple of seasons.

Indians below the poverty line were told to pay 25 paise more for a kilo of sugar and everybody else was warned that traders would be allowed to play poker with prices of the sweetener in a legal sort of way, called forward trading. The FM's concern for public health spills beyond the kitchen, even though he had other prescriptions for the larder as well.

The Yashwant Sinha specialities of the season are fruit juice, preserves, ketchup or any thing at all made of fruit or vegetable, all free completely of excise duty. Coke, Pepsi or any other brand of aerated water is also recommended for the table, again lightened of indirect taxes.

As an added fitness measure, he would recommend that you jog to work or ride a bicycle. A scooter or a motor-cycle is also a desirable mode of transport and so considerably cheaper this year. If you happen to be of the shade of green that worries about the environment and were patronising a CNG (compressed natural gas) bus, you have not been doing enough.

Bus fares are bound to go up because CNG will cost more straightaway and high speed diesel prices will go up sooner or later.

The finance minister did recommend a new car. Car manufacturers obeyed the excise concession at once and vied with one another to undercut the prices.

We warn you though, that petrol prices will pinch you out of that new carriage sooner or later.

Sure, petroleum minister Ram Naik has made the public sector petroleum companies gulp down the extra excise duty dumped on motor spirit and diesel.

The good news is that petroleum fuel prices seem to be softening worldwide, now that the Sheikhs are pumping in more crude oil into the market. The good news is loaded with significance, because the FM reiterated his commitment to get rid of "administered prices" in petro-fuels. Stuffing the additional excise on petrol and diesel down the throat of national oil companies does just that, it administers the price for the market.

Now that the finance minister has made a clean breast of what he has on his mind, we know that the good thing will not last. Sooner or later, the motorist and the bus-owners will pay more for fuel and airlines will follow suit. The petroleum minister says he will free jet fuel prices and the finance minister has seconded that, when he spoke of adhering to the schedule for dismantling the administered price mechanism.

So, by inference, air travel should become less affordable, sometime between now and April 1 (once more, a measure entirely in public interest we are sure, what with air crashes and frequent hijackings.) Railway minister Mamata Didi will bail out frustrated travellers because she has not raised rail fares at all.

The freight hike will bounce back into the household budget when fuel and food transported over long distances begin to turn dearer, but that is a long story. Incidentally, the finance minister frowns on pleasure cruises, too. Luxury boats and yachts have just turned expensive.

As we go to Press, cotton mills are threatening to go on strike, to protest the fresh dose of excise on cotton yarn. Glad rags in any other fabric, particularly synthetic fabric, is the fashion of the day. The mandarins of the North Block would not recommend branded apparel though, which too pinches this year.