First year XLers give gyan on the budget

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1080301/jsp/jharkhand/story_8967732.jsp

A 7.5 from pleased XLRI - ‘... but FM has failed to say from where the funds will come’

NILANJANA GHOSH CHOUDHURY

(From left) Darshan Rathod, Sankalp Vaid, Saurabh Bagadia, Nityanandham M and Aditya Kankaria. Picture by Bhola Prasad Jamshedpur, Feb. 29: XLRI students seem generally pleased with the Union budget, though they are critical of a few issues. All agree, it is undoubtedly a populist election budget. On farmers’ loans, no one seemed fundamentally opposed to the idea. But their opinion is that more planning would have helped. Also, the FM (finance minister), they felt, needed to be specific about how he would provide for the farmers’ loans he planned to write off. In fact, Chidambaram had provided something for everybody — the salaried class would be happy with the tax cuts and the corporate sector will be happy that it has been left alone. We spoke to five first year students of business management — Nityanandham M, Saurabh Bagadia, Aditya Kankaria, Sankalp Vaid and Darshan Rathod. Here’s what they had to say: What is the budget’s big idea ? Waiving farmers’ loans to the tune of Rs 60,000 crore is unprecedented — after all, farmers need it. Also, he has increased outlays in education (20 per cent) and health (15 per cent). Where has the finance minister scored? Various areas: new IITs, tax sops have brought in more flexibility in household budgets, duty cuts have been announced on the pharma and auto sectors, and the implementation of NREGS also gets a boost. Where has he failed? It all looks very good but the FM has failed to say from where the funds will come from. Actually, one-time loan waivers are not enough, in depth planning is required. Also, paramilitary forces need investment too. If you were the FM, what would you have done keeping elections in mind? This is undoubtedly a populist budget. But the finance minister could have done with a little more planning. There was no need for so much of minority appeasement. Certain revenue generating areas such as retail, infrastructure and telecom have been neglected.