Budget 2018: India's unpaid subsidies time-bomb just keeps ticking away

The subsidies which are due should be paid off. Of course, this would mean that the fiscal deficit figure would become worse for a year or two

Over the last decade and a half, the importance of the annual budget of the government of India, for the media, has gone up manifold. The good part of this growing importance has been that large parts of the budget are minutely analysed. 
 

For the budget presented by finance minister Arun Jaitley earlier in the day today, the media is talking about its rural focus, in a year where 10 assembly elections are due. Nevertheless, sometimes, the media does tend to miss the wood for the trees. In the obsession for the minutiae, it misses the big points.
 

One such