Budget circa 2026

Budget circa 2026

 It’s that time of year again when every other news becomes backburner material, and the only topic that merits endless discussion, debate, dissection is the Union Budget tabled by our esteemed Fin Min Nirmala Seetharaman.

Here’s a capture of Budget 2026 in a lighter vein, quoting Shashi Tharoor who has summed it up in his inimitable style in verse form, thus:

Tax our petrol, tax our shirt

Tax our footwear, tax our dirt

Tax our mobile, tax our calls

Tax our hovels’ crumbling walls.

Tax our salary, tax our ride

Tax our mithai on the side

Tax our sorrow, tax our cheer

Tax our future year by year!

GST, income tax – forms pile high

Cesses, surcharges make us sigh

Roads with potholes, trains that derail

Where does it go? Is it all a fail?

When we ask – is this all in vain?

You smile and say – it’s for the nation’s gain!

And if we ask you to try and fix it

You point and say – you will be Viksit!

Yet still we pay with a patriotic heart

Hoping our tax will play a small part

In building a future bright and fair

For the nation we love beyond compare.

And the last verse sums it up rightly – we may rant and rave, criticise and grumble, but somewhere the belief is there that we too have contributed our mite to the task of nation building. And made a difference in some part.

Pullout

Quoting the eloquent Shashi Tharoor on Budget woes…