A Budget for a Brutal, Hostile World
This Budget Is Not Here to Please You. It Is Here to Correct You. Anyone hunting for a catchy headline in Nirmala Sitharaman’s ninth Budget has already misunderstood it. There is none because this Budget is not playing to the gallery . It is not begging for approval from markets, media panels, or WhatsApp economists. It is doing something far more unfashionable: it is telling the country to grow up. This is not an annual budget. It is not even a political budget. It is a strategic document for a country that can no longer pretend the world is benign , rules-based, or fair. Most criticism of the Budget collapses at the first step because it uses mental tools that belong to another era. We still ask: what did I get this year? What tax relief was announced? What subsidy expanded? These are the questions of a complacent economy that believes tomorrow will resemble yesterday. It will not. The world has changed — brutally and irreversibly. Trade is weaponised . Finance is coercive. A...
