I wonder at the excitement being generated in the media about the Union Budget. To me it looks like a war of TRP rather than much analysis of the GDP!! 
Moreover, as a personal finance evangelist, I also wonder why we are not excited about doing our own budgets while we enjoy discussing the Government’s budget. One reason I found is that while the Government can mint/print money, we can’t. And so we need to be limited by our resources and cannot make a wish list like the Government can afford to do!
To me, the Budget is a simple statement of income and expenses while making plans for the future. The future plans are a set of ideas and their execution is a totally different matter.
For example, the target fiscal deficit for FY12 is 4.6% and it was 5.1% for FY11. I just searched in my archive and found that the fiscal deficit targeted in the Feb 28, 2007 Budget was 3.8%. So it’s just a statement of intent, really!
One of the oft repeated term used is GDP. For example all the growth is measured in terms of GDP growth. Fiscal deficit targets are measured in percentage terms of GDP (target for 2006-07 was 3.8%) Gross Domestic Product, we all know. But I’ll probe a bit further to understand the budget better.
GDP is the monetary value of all the finished goods and services produced within a country in a specific time period. It includes all of private and public consumption, government outlays, investments and exports less imports that occur within a defined territory.
In a simple formula representation, GDP = Consumption+ Government Expenditure + Investments+ Net Exports. But it does not include Black money and that is why the existence of a parallel economy!
Now with the World Cup of Cricket going on, my mind is trying to find some parallels between GDP and Cricket!
The game has its components of batting, fielding, bowling and a certain attitude. Likewise the GDP has its components as mentioned above and is measured by relating to various sectors like Industry, Infrastructure, Services and Agriculture.
So while we are famed for our batting (services), have a positive attitude (Industry) and improving our bowling (Infrastructure), fielding (Agriculture) is an area of concern. There is a deceleration of agricultural growth in our country and while the other sectors are growing faster, the agriculture growth drags us down.
I would also expect him to bolster the bowling attack ( I mean the Infrastructure sector) where we have much scope of improvement.
But as I said earlier, talking about those ideas(Budgets) and implementing them on the field are two different ball games.
Ideas are cheap. Execution is always the key. What do you say?
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