A budget to shed the 'suit boot ki sarkar' image

With Budget 2017, FM Arun Jaitley has tried to weaken the perception of it being a govt of moneybags

In 2015, Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi criticised the Narendra Modi Government as a ‘suit boot ki sarkar’, or a government of and for the moneybags. It had hurt the Modi government grievously. After its electoral triumphs in the Lok Sabha and Assembly elections in 2014, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) faced embarrassing defeats in Delhi in February of 2015 and in Bihar in November of that year. On Wednesday, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley’s penultimate Budget strived to neutralise the perception that it was a government friendly to the rich. He also reached out to the middle classes, the traders but