This year?s Budget, according to me, was well-balanced, despite the elections next year. It was not populist and laid the ground for long-term growth.

In his Budget speech, finance minister P Chidambaram spoke about the three faces that represent India?s population ? youth, women and the poor. For women, nothing much apart from the women-only bank was announced today.

But for the youth and the poor, measures have been announced. For the youth, I have personally seen the kind of work done by the National Skill Development Corporation, and it is phenomenal. I have seen the kind of work they do on the ground level, and I can safely say that they can change the way skill development is seen in India. They have immense scope.

For the poor, the direct cash transfer will be of great help. Also, plans of additional investment in the infrastructure sector will help create employment, which will directly benefit the poor.

Now the finance minister needs to ensure that inflation is tamed. In terms of tackling economic growth, he seems to have tackled it well, I think.

We are happy that excise duty for apparel has been exempted. That will help heal India?s textile industry to a great extent.

For the retail sector, we were expecting that service tax would be reduced. I am disappointed with two major aspects for the sector.

First, there was no clarification on the timeline for the goods and services tax, as to when it will be implemented. This was something that would have given some confidence to companies. Then, there was no further announcements on multi-brand retail. There are bottlenecks regarding the minimum investment of $100 million, having to invest 50% in back-end infrastructure, and so on.

Changes regarding back-end investment need to be made in the foreign direct investment (FDI) proposals as the law may not go in the current avatar. There needs to be a re-look at the proposal so that it can be implemented effectively.

We were also expecting some measures that will counter inflation and cost, but not much has come through in this regard.