All talk and no change

The budget speech is not a dictum carved in a stone; it must reflect deep engagements in a palimpsest.

“Listen to all opinions, but act on your own.” Finance Minister Prakash Sharan Mahat seems to have internalised this oft-misinterpreted adage a bit too religiously. For, after weeks of post-budgetary analyses in Parliament, all that the finance minister has done is turn deaf ears to the comments and criticisms and is trying to bulldoze the parliamentary process to get the budget passed. All through the parliamentary debates, Minister Mahat has carried an air of intellectual arrogance unbecoming of a leader of a patchwork coalition government that represents contesting ideologies.