Union Budget 2022: Kudos to Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman

This time around, I must go on record praising her for the way in which she has framed the Union Budget for 2022-23

Exactly two years ago, for the very same newspaper, I wrote a seriously critical piece on Finance Minister (FM) Nirmala Sitharaman’s second Union Budget. My piece on her last Budget (2021-22) was partly critical. But it also recognised that she deserved praise given that it was tough Budget to frame; and I commended her strategy of keeping a ‘goody bag’ of Rs 44,000 crore of standby money with the Department of Economic Affairs, which could be used to provide extra resources for projects, programmes and departments that showed good progress on capital expenditure and required further funds.

This time around,