This refers to the editorial, “Many shades of hope” (July 11). No Budget can please everyone. The positive aspects of the Union Budget for 2014-15 are an increase in tax exemption limits, continuation of the rural employment guarantee scheme with some required tweaking, and certain other social sector schemes.
This proves that the Union Minister for Finance Arun Jaitley did not resort to scoring political points by discarding UPA programmes. Having a huge disinvestment target of Rs 63,000 crore shouldn't be a problem for him, considering the positive sentiments that have come into the market ever since the Narendra Modi Government took charge.
His two biggest challenges are keeping the deficit target at 4.1 per cent and raising adequate resources. He had to maintain a balance between keeping the aam aadmi and the corporate sector satisfied. Hopefully, he will clear all the bottlenecks in implementing his infrastructure targets as well as the plan for 100 ‘smart cities'.