Finance minister Arun Jaitley on Monday made a strong push to counter the "suit-boot ki sarkar" tag conferred on the government by Rahul Gandhi by unveiling a Budget that focussed on wooing farmers and the poor while conspicuously soaking the "rich".
The Budget speech dwelt on what the FM described as a "transformative agenda" with the farm and non-farm rural sectors getting pride of place, followed by job creation, infrastructure and the social sector. Areas like financial sector reforms, ease of doing business, fiscal discipline and tax reforms also formed part of the nine pillars of this agenda, but ranked lower on the list.
The finance minister opened his speech by referring to how India had held its own in the face of an adverse global economic environment, but there was little thereafter to indicate that the external sector was a source of concern, or how the government planned to deal with it.
The somewhat unusual nature of the Budget seemed to leave the markets unsure of how to react, with the indices yo-yoing wildly through the speech and finally settling a little lower than on Friday.
The upper middle class and the "rich" were given short shrift: Not only was there no relaxation on tax slabs or exemption limits, they were hit with an increase in surcharge, from 12% to 15%, on tax on incomes above Rs 1 crore; also, those with dividend earnings of over Rs 10 lakh per annum will now have to pay tax on it.
To top it all, there is a new cess - in the name of 'krishi kalyan' (farm welfare) - on all services and an infrastructure cess on cars of all sizes.
Interestingly, in a Budget where the political priorities were clear, there was no mention of any specific city or state either for a project or a sop, a first in recent memory.