The Hindu Business Line : Growth and equity

The Budget has managed to be consistent with the country's growth imperatives and provide continuity and stability in reforms. Oscar Wilde may have said that consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative, but the Finance Minister, for one, did not yield to this temptation and throw up major surprises in an effort to be imaginative! With its emphasis on rural development, the Budget has reiterated the Government's investment in thrust areas such as health, education and job (and thereby demand) creation.

In this context, announcements related to the power sector, especially in the areas of enhancement of generation capacities and electrification of villages as well investing Rs 1,500 crore to increase rural teledensity, show the Government is pursuing the roadmap defined two years ago. However, the IT sector was hoping that the push on urban infrastructure such as mass transit systems and airports could have been more focused by green lighting critical projects.

The Finance Minister's proposals to create a high-end hardware manufacturing hub in semi-conductors, flat LCDs and storage devices will go a long way to drive India's technological prowess beyond software and services.

More importantly, the Budget underscores the importance of electronic governance to create operational efficiencies in the country: the announcement that 25 e-governance projects will be rolled out during the year covering Web-based models to deliver services such as ration card applications, electoral roll, land records, issue of birth and death certificates, is heartening.

The rationalisation in the Fringe Benefit Tax, especially on travel and superannuation, is welcome but falls short of expectation. While consumers can rejoice as many goods have become cheaper, one minor retrograde step is the levy of 8 per cent excise duty on packaged software. While enterprise software may move to the net, the real losers will be new consumers of software, including buyers of edutainment packages. Piracy of packaged software, an issue plaguing the industry, may only further get aggravated with this duty levy.

(The author is CEO & MD, Tata Consultancy Services Ltd.)