Taxonomy of Budget commentators

Hamlet : Do you see yonder cloud that's almost in the shape of a camel?

Polonius : By th' Mass, and 'tis like a camel, indeed.

Hamlet : Methinks it is like a weasel.

Polonius : It is backed like a weasel.

Hamlet : Or like a whale.

Polonius : Very like a whale.

– Hamlet, Act III, Scene II

Let not the title make you jump to the conclusion that I am going to talk of some new branch of economic thought on the anatomy of taxation in the same big league as astronomy, gastronomy or agronomy. You may be tempted to think it has something to do with ergonomy which goes into human-machine relationship, because you thought tax administration to be a machine. Forget it.

Having been a Budget-watcher for well-nigh 20 years, I modestly claim to have developed some insight into the science of classification (which is what taxonomy is about) of Budget commentators. It would be utterly selfish on my part to keep my findings to myself and, hence, I have decided to unburden them to humanity at large.

Taking the breed of Budget commentators as a whole, certain common characteristics are immediately evident.

They don't even need a Budget to dump their comments on. They are trained practitioners of metempsychosis. Weeks and even months before B-Day, they manage to put themselves into the shoes of whoever is the Finance Minister (FM), and come out with a plethora of prophecies, prognostications and prescriptions on the innards of the Budget without any trace of self-doubt or fear of contradiction.

One of the ground rules of their game is to let fly judgments and opinions in all directions, least mindful of their being in conflict with one another.

The same Budget is at once the best and the worst, progressive and retrograde, lacklustre and brilliant, depending on their individual obsessions and prejudices.

Party faithful

They remind me of candidates appearing for a psychiatric test who, when shown the same few lines scribbled on a piece of paper and asked what they are supposed to remind them of, come up with a wide variety of answers extending to both animate and inanimate entities!

Then there are the party faithful with pretensions to some degree of knowledge of the financials and ability to tote up the numbers. Their task is simple and straightforward: To praise the Budget to the skies if the FM is from their own party, and to denounce it to their hearts' content if he is a political adversary.

In discharging this onerous duty, they get their cues from the topmost rungs, call them High Command, Supremos or what you will. The quotation from Shakespeare at the head of the column is an exact description of their survival technique.

Political idealogues and dogmatic academics come next. I lump them together because for them no Budget is worth the name unless it fits into their pet preferences and cherished doctrines. They view with suspicion and/or cynicism anyone not belonging to their coterie and hardly any Budget makes the grade, judged by their criteria.

The easiest to please are the leading lights of the corporate world: All that the FM has to do to transport them to Cloud Nine is to slash the taxes and duties across the board and give them a free hand to do whatever they consider to be good for the bottom-line.

Conversely, all that he has to do to incur their displeasure is to go in for new levies or raise the existing ones. It is as simple as that.

Finally, the aam aadmi . Hardly anybody asks him for his opinion. Everything is done in his name, but he has no say in whatever is done. He, therefore, is forced to express himself by taking to the streets.

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