Political compulsions and the threat of further middle-class disenchantment with the Congress party seems to have forced the finance minister to skirt concrete reforms in the Budget
Pranab Mukherjee once told an aide that he does not believe in revolutions but gradual evolution. At a time when the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government is gripped by a political crisis, expecting the diminutive Congress trouble-shooter, ever the pragmatist, to present a radically reformist Budget perhaps would have been a long shot.