The Hindu Business Line : No comforting hugs!

With inflation ruling high and the economic growth story looking strong one would have expected the FM to extend at least some painkillers to the common man — unfortunately the hugs are for the dogs and cats and not for you and me!

There is hardly anything in the Budget which is going to make the price rise pain easier for the consumer — there are token reductions in import duty of edible oils and banning of futures trade in paddy and wheat but no one expects them to rein in prices of these products.

As the FM himself stated that the inflationary pressures are supply side-induced, one would have expected him to leave more money in our hands by lowering taxes to allow us to meet rising expenses.

There is no real set of products where consumers can expect price cuts - even in biscuits where there is an excise exemption on glucose ones, it is unlikely to see price changes of 25 paise on a pack of biscuits costing Rs 4. Of course, the Pedigrees and Whiskas of the world can smile!

Neither is there anything which is going to ease the burden on my purse nor put more money into it by way of lower taxes or cesses. The increase in the threshold by Rs 10,000 for personal income taxes is hardly a big gain — and just at the time that the stock markets were booming and the employees in emerging sectors were hoping to cash in on their ESOPs there is an FBT imposed on it too!

A seemingly innocuous change like adding service tax on commercial rental payments could mean that thousands of property owners could be dragged into the service tax net this year, which seems contrary to the logic of enhancing the floor limit for service tax to Rs 8 lakh from Rs 4 lakh earlier.

So no joy for you and me — of course, to find a silver lining we can look back 20 years and say that in the context of budgets of those days at least we are not loaded with additional costs - thank god for small mercies!

(The writer is MD of discount retail chain Subhiksha)