Budget 2016: Has Modi Junked Gujraat Model

If you voted BJP because of what you were told Modi did to Gujarat, this budget may look like a case of broken promises. What exactly has changed, if at all?

- Lola Nayar With R.K. Mishra

As Budget Day approached, it had become increasin­gly apparent that the Modi government was keen to shed its corporate­friendly tag. There was much talk of agriculture and rural distress in Delhi, and Outlook’s cover in early Feb­ruary was titled Bharat

Isn’t Shining. Media leaks by friendly bureaucrats stressed that Prime Minister Narendra Modi was wired into the budget. He personally casti­gated corporates at an ET business summit, saying an ‘incentive’ or ‘sub­vention’ was just another word for a subsidy. Before the big day, Modi told audiences at his radio broadcast Mann ki Baat that he had a ‘big test’ the next day. On Budget Day, while Arun Jaitley struggled through the motions—mis­ pronouncing autism a few times— Modi looked like a man badly in need of a haircut, but totally in control.

What followed was a budget that would have made the UPA proud, prompting The Telegraph to caption it as ‘Comrade Plus a Cow’, a snarky take on Arun Shourie’s “Congress plus a cow” moniker for Modi’s BJP. Observers were left rubbing their eyes in disbelief funding for farm and the poor (more about that later); much talk about UPA’s pet projects Aadhaar and NREGA; barely a word on defence; none on any big bang move on how to deal with plunging exports, poor manufacturing as well as lackadaisical private sector and foreign investment. Many economists are unhappy, companies are unhappy, and the middle class is deeply unhappy about EPF taxation.