It was expected Budget 08-09 would be populist but I must say the honourable Finance Minister surprised a lot of us with this one. Instead of earmarking enhanced allocation for existing education schemes, loopholes for which are aplenty, it would have made more sense to give the same money to unique public private partnership models and have clear deliverables and answerability to local leaders in place.

The hike in exemption limits is a small relief but with such a wide stream of taxpayers still out of the net, the impact of that will be felt by limited people. Some more thrust could have been made to cleanse the system of the huge amounts of black money that exist today.

As far as our Information technology industry is concerned, the Budget has been a dampener. IT does not seem to have been on the radar - the finance minister has retained the current levels of custom duty while the excise duty on computers continues to be twelve percent.