EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

The annual Union Budget exercise is a many-splendoured thing—it means whatever you want it to mean, depending on where you stand. It is paved with good intentions, coupled with great leaps of faith, even though the past is strewn with broken promises and gross under-performance. A political statement, it gives an inkling of the government’s thinking. It raises great expectations, but often ends in bitter disappointments. That businessmen praise it in public and whine in private is a given.