Short-term point: consumption’s economic multiplier effect lower than capex’s. Long-term point: smaller income taxpayer base means GST rates will remain high, social contract between elite and govt will weaken
Budget was once a spectacle — and a compendium of quotable quotes, from Thirukkural to Tagore, prefixed by Manmohan Singh’s invocation of Bismil via the evocative “Sarfaroshi ki tamanna” in 1991. It is now a balance sheet of the Union govt. As it should be, as it is in most of the world. Additionally, and understandably for a poor but hyperactive democracy, budget is a platform for political-economy trade-offs. Budgetary tilts in specific domains are to attract political equities in the same.