Finance minister P Chidambaram disarmed the Left, evoked a sense of relief amongst UPA allies and sent jitters within the Opposition NDA camp by showering largesse on crucial votebases in an election-year Budget unveiled on Friday.

The pro-farmer, pro-aam admi Budget, most important of all, has given the Congress and its allies in the UPA a bagful of talking points in the run-up to the next Lok Sabha elections.

Desperately looking for issues to neutralise anti-incumbency and growing criticism over rising prices, they have been suddenly provided with the perfect handle to counter Opposition charges on this front.

Political circles feel that the populist Budget is a hint that the UPA might risk an early poll, possibly by the end of the year. While Congress managers have maintained that they would not like to be accused of not being able to run a coalition full-term, they say if relations worsened with the Left parties, particularly over the nuclear deal issue, the least the UPA could do was to be prepared for a late 2008 General Elections.

The Budget earmarks farmers as the biggest beneficiaries besides women, minorities and SCs and STs, while trying to make the middle class happy with relief in the area of tax exemptions.

Political circles are of the view that the UPA move to write-off agricultural loans to the tune of Rs 60,000 crore for small and marginal farmers can transform into an electoral bonanza. Four crore farmer families are likely to be directly affected by the dole and if they reciprocate with gratefulness, the move could prove decisive in the next General Elections. No wonder the NDA benches on Friday raised howls of protest.

Chidambaram?s ?political Budget? also made an undisguised effort to win the confidence of the Muslim community. It sought to send an unambiguous signal by hiking the allocation to the ministry of minority affairs by 100%, from Rs 500 crore to Rs 1,000 crore.

A substantial part of the funds has been assigned for multi-sectoral development programmes for minorities in selected minority concentration districts. The allocation has gone up eightfold from Rs 66 crore last year to Rs 485 crore this year. Scholarships for minorities in professional and technical courses too have made a substantial jump from Rs 48 crore to Rs 112 crore. These decisions are certain to force parties like the Samajwadi Party (SP) to up the ante against the Congress, as any realignment of Muslim votes would only be at their expense.

The Budget has also sought to appease alliance partners. For instance, the DMK?s demand to get the Sethusamudram project on track has been acceded to by the finance minister, who has allocated Rs 1,580 crore this year, three times higher than the Rs 524 crore last year. This despite the fact that the matter is currently before the Supreme Court, which is yet to lift the stay on resumption of dredging work on the canal. Other partners like steel minister Ram Vilas Paswan, too, has been kept happy with an almost 50% increase in allocations to his ministry from Rs 6,204 to Rs 9,543 crore. The UPA has also made significant increases in its flagship programmes including the Bharat Nirman (Rs 24,603 to Rs 31,280), National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (Rs 16,000 crore), Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (Rs 6,866 crore from Rs 5,482 crore) and the Rajiv Gandhi National Drinking Water Mission (Rs 6,500 to Rs 7,300).

Justifying the huge dole to farmers, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Friday said that his government has been generous in its response to deal with the depression in agriculture sector.

?It is an unorthodox response. But considering the amount of depression that prevails in the agriculture sector, this is a response mechanism that is justified,? he said in his post-Budget comments. He, however, listed out inflation and international recession as causes for concern. He said, ?We will have to tackle both worries. There is a worry that international recession will impact the growth process. Rise in commodity prices, petroleum prices will lead to more inflation.?

Feeble protests from the Left parties have made it obvious that they have a lot to take credit for the Budget. They welcomed the debt relief for farmers, but said more could have been done, as it would exclude bulk of small and marginal farmers of dry-land areas who own more than 2 acres of land. They were also appreciative of the income tax relief for the middle class.