Inidian Budget for 2009-10

IT’S FOR YOU and for HER

Our readers are the cream of Indian society. Our interest in the Budget revolves mostly around our immediate concerns: Will I take home a fatter salary, will my investments yield higher returns, will car prices fall, will my business benefit? Our Budget edition seeks to address such concerns. But there is another India that many of us have only a passing acquaintance with. It’s an India of several hundred million people who barely make a few rupees a day. They live without a roof over their head, and die without medical treatment. They cannot write or spell their names, far less read the Budget edition of this paper…It’s time we gave the other India hope of a better life – not just because it’s the right thing to do, but also because if we don’t, ‘our India’ won’t grow and prosper in the long run...Call it what you will — a Cinderella moment, India in search of Bharat — but we need to recognise that a Budget must be as much about the girl in the picture as it is about us. She cannot continue to be just another blurred face in the car window. She, too, must be able to dream — of bidding farewell to alms...

Shankar Raghuraman | TIMES NEWS NETWORK