TV BYTES

Adi Godrej
Chairman, Godrej Group
Generally, it was a good Budget. The reduction in IT slabs together with the reduction of spends in rural India will create room for consumer demand. From an industry point of view, some features are not very welcome, but we have to take them in our stride. However, for most industries I think this is a good Budget. The GDP growth rate of 8 to 8.5 per cent expected in 2010-11 will be delivered through this Budget. A welcome feature was that the fiscal deficit was sought to be contained.

Uday Kotak
Vice-Chairman & MD, Kotak Mahindra Bank
The Budget has focused on some key sectors. First is the agricultural and rural sector, second is the infrastructure sector and thirdly, there is a significantly higher focus on the importance and the relevance of the financial sector, and also put that in context of the view that the government will depend more on it, and the private sector will continue to have growth and a growing role in the Indian financial sector.

S Gopalakrishnan
CEO and MD, Infosys
The focus on e-governance is something to look forward to for the Indian IT industry. Overall, there are many things in the Budget beneficial to IT.

Amit Mitra
Secretary General, FICCI
I think in infrastructure, it is very heartening. Agriculture, very heartening. For the first time he has talked about the informal sector in a big way. With so many stimuli continuing, especially to small people, agricultural people, the small entrepreneur — he has given Rs 16,000 crore of additional credit!

Meghnad Desai
Economist and member of UK House of Lords
This is exactly what I expected. I don’t expect Pranab Mukherjee to be adventurous or radical. I expect him to give a steady-as-she-goes, neutral Budget. I’m disappointed by the slow rate of deficit reduction, but he’s probably going to come back next year and say, look, I did better than I predicted, because I got more revenue, etc. We have to stop pretending the fuel subsidy keeps prices down and all that nonsense.

Manmohan Singh
PM
Overall, my impression is the Finance Minister has done the right mix.

Gopinath Munde
BJP MP and Deputy Leader of the Opposition
The debate on price rise happened yesterday. We hoped that there would be action taken on that in the Budget. The aam aadmi cannot bear this any more. This Budget is against the average citizens, and for this reason, we boycotted it.

Murli Manohar Joshi
Senior BJP MP
By increasing the cost of petrol, prices will rise. This is anti-farmer. It is against the aam aadmi. What they have done for the social sector is just a joke.

D Raja
National Secretary, Communist Party of India
The Budget is not in the interest of the people.

R Chandrasekhar
Rajya Sabha MP (Independent) and founder, Jupiter Capital
Without getting into the politics of it, the Budget has done little. I would have expected more about the architectural direction of the economy, details about how the next three or four years will play out in terms of economic growth. Most of the disappointment with the Budget will come from the fiscal deficit. I would have thought that he would not have touched the stimulus package for this year, that he would have looked at other sources of raising revenue, because the roots of recovery are still not deep, there are green shoots. 2010 will go down as a year of missed opportunity.