Fiscal footsie: Jaitley's budget trades urban honeymoon for rural marriage

The three problems the FM is addressing are excess capacity in industry, slugging growth in small and medium enterprises and a general shortage of employment wrapped in an agrarian crisis

If R.K. Laxman had been around, he might have drawn a cartoon of  Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Finance Minister Arun Jaitley inside a helicopter spraying cash across villages,  with the iconic common man in his checked, tattered jacket, holding a newspaper that says "Cess for education, health increased."

It does not take much imagination to guess that the NDA government's last budget before the next general election is an attempt to please rural voters but what is significant is that it does not seem to have bothered about fiscal discipline, rising oil prices or the inflationary potential of fanning