Budget 2004

No, I'm not a financial expert, so I'm not going to give a detailed analysis of the Union Budget 2004. But I am going to mention a few things that I caught on from reading here and there. But first, I just realized today that the present government has a really funky name for their coalition. I mean I knew the name before as well, but I hadn't thought about it closely enough. Anyways, coming back to the name – its Unified Progressive Alliance. I wonder how much thought our leaders put into what these words actually mean. My first reaction was this name sounds straight out of a Robocop style movie (or Terminator 2 for that matter). India is certainly progressive; but what about this alliance? There have been concerns in the industry and in the general public regarding the slowing down of liberalization and economic reforms under this new govenment. Also, when they say Unified, are they talking about India being unified or their alliance being unified? One without the other doesn't India much good does it? Okay, coming back to the Budget, here are some of the things that I have gathered:

• Laloo Yadav has mandated that all tea in railways will henceforth be served in kulhads (clay cups)
• There shall be no more excise on personal computers
• There will be a 2% surcharge on your tax liability (kind of like a tax on your tax). UPA says this money will be used for primary education and providing food to the famished
• There is some kind of transaction fee (15 cents or 15 paise? don't remember) on foreign investments (again, not sure on this point). I read somewhere that this is going to discourage investors
• On the flipside, the investment cap for FDIs (foreign direct investments) has been raised by as much as 20-30% in some sectors (notably insurance)
• The IT exemption limit has been raised to Rs. 100,000 – so no tax if you're earning less than that
• To protect the receding steel market, excise duty on steel imports has been increased

I'll put in more comments and opinions as and when I form them. To be honest, I don't understand much of the finance jargon, but I wish I had some more understanding of how economy works. I don't even have strong opinions on politics and political parties in India… which is kind of sad, since I would be a voter if I were in India right now. [sigh] I guess I should start reading up more on politics. But good news sources are so hard to come by these days – ToI has already become a pathetic tabloid junkie, Rediff and some others are still doing a good job though.