The budget can be reviewed on many parameters. This article asks three questions. First, is this budget different? Second, will this budget drive growth without exacerbating inflation? Finally, in his speech, the Finance Minister made it clear that the “Union Budget cannot be a mere statement of Government accounts [and it] has to reflect the Government's vision and signal the policies to come in future�. Going further, he outlined three challenges, viz.: (a) “find the means to cross the 'double digit growth barrier'�, (b) “to harness economic growth … in making development more inclusive� and (c) alleviate the “the bottleneck of our public delivery mechanisms�. How does this budget fare against his own benchmarks to evaluate the budget?

Is this budget different?

Table 1 compares the budget not with its immediate predecessor but with the budgets from the two preceding years, i.e., the first year of the slowdown, 2008-09 and the year before that, a high growth year, 2007-08. As can be seen, while the expenditure levels are lower than that observed in 2008-09 (15.99% versus 16.61%), they are still well above the levels of 2007-08. While subsidies appear to have been cut from 2008-09, they remain higher than in 2007-08, and this is without the effect of oil subsidies, for which there is only a small provision in this budget. Similarly, while nonplan capital expenditure appears to have risen, it is actually lower and plan revenue expenditure is higher and can be expected to remain so on account of the various schemes such as MGNREGS. Thus, it appears that the government is still not confident of the end of the slowdown and has budgeted for significantly high levels of government spending, as compared, for example to 2007- 08.