<b>Shankar Acharya:</b> A good Budget in difficult times

Against a turbulent and uncertain background, Budget 2017-18 hewed a steady, forward-looking course

Many have damned the Union Budget 2017-18 with faint praise: “Workmanlike”, “conservative”, “middle of the road”, “does no harm”, “please-all” and so on. This is unfair. Had this been a normal year, then these descriptions may have been closer to the mark. But the times are far from normal. The circumstances for Budget-making were extraordinarily difficult, perhaps the most challenging since the summer of 1991. For Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and his team to have delivered a decent Budget in these trying times deserves high praise. It would have been so easy to have been blown off course by some