To me the most important aspect of Budget 2010-11 was the finance minister?s articulation of the government?s vision of being an enabling government, which ??does not try to deliver to citizens everything that they need. Instead, it creates an enabling ethos so that individual enterprise and creativity can flourish. The government concentrates on supporting and delivering services to the disadvantaged sections of society.?
The Economic Survey, tabled the day before, goes into considerably greater detail on this, outlining, amongst other things, policies for food coupons for BPL families, and cash subsidy payments to poor farmers to ensure cost-effective delivery of more inclusive growth while keeping the lid on the fiscal deficit.
While it will take some time for India to completely become this Brave New World, the Left is clearly dead, and I think the articulated change in focus is remarkable and calls for celebration.
Of course, talk is cheap and the devil is in the implementation. But let us not forget that, as FM, we have a man of high credibility ? much less talk about budget jugglery than usual ? and, critically, one who knows how to get things done. Look at how smoothly he forced the nutrient-based subsidy scheme into the fertilizer industry over the reported objections of the fertilizer minister and the heretofore quite powerful minster for food & civil supplies.
Clearly, the government has understood that it has a real political mandate and can ? and should ? give full rein to a new and particularly Indian definition of what a market economy should be.