Given the somewhat fragile political and economic environment, a minimalist Budget, steering clear of any bold experimentation, was what was on the cards, and that is what it has turned out to be.

The Finance Minister, Mr Pranab Mukherjee, with his fine-tuned political antennae, has refrained from raising expectations of anything spectacular by way of goals or targets, leave alone innovations.

To see them dashed to the ground would be too much of a risk to take, especially when the UPA Government was entering the sensitive semi-final phase of its term and could not afford to go to the hustings with a sullied record of economic performance.

The contents of the Economic Survey too could be said to lend themselves only to this unambitious approach of improvisation and consolidation.

The Survey has not brought out any evidence of fundamentals straying too far from the median, and being in need of any drastic mending. So, it was only to be expected that Mr Mukherjee would decide not to rock the boat and would opt to coast along, by sticking to the established, conventional track. He is also by temperament, cast in a cautious, conservative mould, preferring stability and continuity to controversy and conflict.

Causing any distraction at this stage and answering futile arguments arising from it would simply consume time and energy which, he must have reasoned, had better be spent on fixing problems.

UNEXCEPTIONABLE, UNEXCITING

Even within these limitations, what the people were waiting to know was the strategy, or the vision, if you will, the Finance Minister had framed in his mind to arrest the pronounced slowdown in growth resulting from a severe drag in industrial performance, particularly in the manufacturing sector, and the perceptible deterioration in the management of the

Government's finances which has put paid the Government's efforts to maintain fiscal balance and keep the fiscal and revenue deficits within the statutorily prescribed limits. Instead, what the Finance Minister has ended up doing is to make the Budget into nothing more than an unexciting, if unexceptionable, document comprising, on the one hand, the good, the bad and the ugly in the performance of the economy as he saw them, and, on the other, the tiresomely long enumeration of the allocations for various schemes and the raising or lowering of the taxes and duties.

Restoring the economy to a healthy rebound is not a mere matter of introducing a tax-free retail equity scheme and enlarging the scope for extra commercial borrowings for projects on roads, power and airlines.

Nor is it automatically brought about by augmentation of revenues from the jacking up of the levies in regard to various items, or pushing down the fiscal deficit from the current 5.6 per cent to 5.1 per cent at the end of 2012-13. These are no doubt important in ensuring availability of funds for industrial development and infrastructure, investments in the essential sectors of agriculture, energy, education and health, and provisioning for the enormous but still financially indeterminate responsibility assumed by the Government for guaranteed food security.

VITAL PRE-REQUISITE

At least an aggressive push to financial reforms could have made up for some of the lacunae in other areas. The lukewarm reference to them in the Budget does not carry conviction that they will be pursued with vigour any time soon.

Above all, the most vital pre-requisite for the success of the Government in all that it wants to undertake is its will and capability not only to be ruthless in cutting wasteful expenditure on its own account and but also imposing and enforcing the most stringent safeguards against the reckless squandering of resources indulged in by State governments, eventually blackmailing the Centre to bail them out.

It is a good augury that the Finance Minister has explicitly committed himself, for the first time in this Budget, to give high priority to service delivery, transparency and preventive measures against corruption, and has even promised to bring out a White Paper on black money.

Fulfilment of this one promise alone will be a precursor to a soaring economy and will vastly enthuse the economic players to putting their best efforts to assist the process.

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