A remarkable feature of the first budget of the Modi government was that the numbers in it (see Table 1 for a summary) – of the revenues that are anticipated from different source, the expenditures allocated to different heads and the fiscal deficit which expresses the gap between the aggregates of these – were almost identical to those in the interim budget presented earlier in the year by the UPA government.
The one thing about Budget 2014-15 about which there is virtually complete unanimity is that it could very well have been one presented by the former finance minister P. Chidambaram. While for obvious reasons many have been chary of articulating it very sharply and clearly, even corporate India and the neoliberal bandwagon appear a little surprised and disappointed at this level of continuity between the UPA and the BJP regimes.
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