Arun Jaitley’s maiden budget is clearly a left brained budget. The left part of the brain is the one that works in a logical fashion by digesting a lot of information, applying known rules of knowledge, and producing decisions. In the short span of time, Jaitley’s brain had to digest a huge amount of information and knowledge. Given these limitations, he has managed to come up with a decent budget that gives some additional energy to the producers, some additional bucks in the hands of the consumers, and some additional support to the underprivileged…all this while maintaining fiscal prudence.
His budget, though, is in total contrast to Modi’s election campaign. It was heavily right brained, ie innovative. With his long experience in politics, Modi clearly saw that winning the game could not be achieved by doing more of the same. As a result, he came up with several innovations, and the results are impressive. It is important to understand that Modi had plenty of time to come up with innovative ideas. Unfortunately, Jaitley didn’t have that luxury of time for this budget.
But when it comes to Budget 2015, Jaitley has plenty of time to deploy his right brain thinking to come up with something bold and innovative. And he will surely have the support and inspiration of Modi to do that.
The bottomline is that Jaitley should be commended for achieving the best that is human-brainly possible in the short period. I look forward to a right brained Budget 2015 and will share some right brain ideas in the forthcoming issues of Banking Frontiers.
