Budget reads:

  1. P. Vaidyanathan Iyer in the Indian Express summarises Budget 2017, saying it had no big announcements but “deftly put together small things which, taken cumulatively, present an imaginative economic strategy for what clearly are uncertain times.”
  2. In the Business Standard, Mihir S Sharma calls it a “clean-up job”, particularly on macro-economic indicators, some troubled sectors, and on tax compliance.
  3. Beyond the lack of fireworks in the Budget, the broad takeaway almost seems to be the surprise of no negative shocks, writes R Jagannathan in Swarajya.
  4. Manas Chakravarty in Mint looks a little more carefully at the expenditure and revenue numbers and concludes that the government is not expecting much more in the way of receipts, which is why spending hasn’t expanded either.
  5. “The budget inspires confidence in one key respect: It has not succumbed to political temptations. It is an exercise in forward-looking but cautious prudence,” writes Pratap Bhanu Mehta in the Indian Express.
  6. The poor who were hit hard by demonetisation are unimpressed with Finance Minister Arun Jaitley’s tax breaks as a balm for their pain, finds Krittivas Mukherjee in the Hindustan Times.
  7. “Jaitley has presented four budgets. Except for repetition of the promise of doubling farmers’ income in the next five years, I haven’t seen any clear roadmap being laid out,” writes Devinder Sharma in Mint, looking at what the Budget has for agriculture.
  8. Rukmini S in the Huffinton Post looks at the political funding transparency measures in the Budget and asks if it closes one loophole while opening another?
  9. Neither the Economic Survey nor the Budget mentioned the word “environment” even once, finds Damini Nath in the Hindu.
  10. And if you need something more graphical after all that analysis, go see the illustrations throughout the Economic Times which this year presents Modi and Jaitley as soldiers going into battle.

The Big Scroll