If the Finance Minister, Nirmala Sitharaman, really believed that her fifth Union Budget was going to get a stamp of approval from everyone in society and the political spectrum, she must have been living in a world of her own. Getting into a Budget exercise the Finance Minister and officials in the ministry were quite aware of not only the daunting global economic challenges but the patent realities of India that had to be addressed with poverty and the widening gap between the rich and the poor heading the pack.
At end of the day even the bitter political critic of the BJP Government could not have accused the Finance Minister of not trying. It is not a matter of having to please everyone that matters in a national exercise such as this; but in a task of patiently explaining of why we cannot have the cake and eat it too. But a bottom line has been one of the Finance Minister effectively juggling the various ingredients that go to make a pill that is difficult to swallow most of the times.
