Budget by the Jees

It is a bit coincidental that the Railway Budget has been presented by Mamta Bannerjee while the Finance Budget has been presented by another Jee, Peranab Mukherjee.

The Budget this time is a soft Budget with the FM trying to play a balancing role.

I attended a Budget discussion seminar today conducted by Prime Academy. Mr. Pattabhiram the anchor made this point: Umbrellas have always attracted successive Finance Ministers with the Excise Duty on Umbrellas swinging from nil to as high as 16% in succession.

We had an Economist Mr. Kabali who answered queries on Economic Impact. He made the point that while India had internal debt of about 53% of GDP, Greece has 113%! Therefore the Grecian Economy is on the verge of collapse.

After the session, Mr. Kabali was inquiring ofsenior Economist Dr. Radhakrishnan if he had spoken sense or otherwise. I remarked (in my own way!) that luckily for him in Economics, the difference is very difficult to detect.