'If the BJP detoxifies the nuclear liability law, it will bring economic, environmental and, most of all, strategic benefits.'
'Let's keep our fingers crossed and hope that this Budget promise is met soon -- ideally, before Mr Modi heads to his first meeting with Trump 2.0,' observes Shekhar Gupta.
In one way, the fact that our Budgets year after year tend to be boring -- so boring, in fact, as to leave the markets befuddled, not knowing whether to go up or down -- is a good thing.
Although I am also equally intrigued by why the markets do not see a lower-than-budgeted fiscal deficit and a substantially lower estimate for the next year as a big positive.
This, I might see as the better and braver part of the Budget, especially when big economies across the world are struggling with their out-of-control fiscal deficits. Do the markets not reward fiscal discipline?
Don't ask me. I won't even try to understand the markets. Trying to decode politics is hard enough, more fun, and safer, too.
Staying with politics for a minute, the most audacious and positive statement in the Budget lies in the domain of politics and strategic affairs.
It is the intention to amend the Atomic Energy Act and the Civil Liability on Nuclear Damage Act.
Read this with the target of 100 Gw (1 Gw is 1,000 Mw) nuclear power by 2047. Read it also with the quick adjustments forced by the return of Donald Trump.
If he's transactional, what will India offer as 'give' in return for any 'take'? Sizeable nuclear purchases (remember, Westinghouse?) can work like magic.
For that, India must amend its dead-on-arrival Civil Liability on Nuclear Damage Act (CLNDA) passed by the United Progressive Alliance government in 2010.
Its main killer clause, allowing the operator to sue the supplier for damages in case of accident, was inserted on the Bharatiya Janata Party's insistence then.
Having lost out on the confidence vote over the civil nuclear deal, it now got even by preventing the UPA (and India) from consummating that deal for clean energy.
The law, as it exists, stands in contravention, or let's say, non-compliance with the Convention on Supplementary Compensation for Nuclear Damage (CSC), which limits the liability on the operator and immunises the supplier.
A BJP chafing from that nuclear deal defeat then had found fortuitous tailwinds in the perfectly timed (for their politics) controversial 2010 Supreme Court order on Bhopal gas tragedy liability.
It brought the liability issue back into public opinion. The Left and the Right combined with environmentalists and liability law was strangled.
If the BJP detoxifies the same law now, it will bring economic, environmental and, most of all, strategic benefits.
It will be another welcome turnaround after the Modi government's embrace of the Civil Nuclear Deal, strategic shift to Washington, and, don't forget, the border settlement with Bangladesh it had opposed under the UPA.
If it goes through, it will be another case of 'der aaye, durust aaye' (better late than never).
Let's keep our fingers crossed and hope that this Budget promise is met soon -- ideally, before Mr Modi heads to his first meeting with Trump 2.0.
Amendment to the Atomic Energy Act might involve shifting nuclear power generation to the power ministry.
If the Modi government is able to swing these amendments, it would also benefit in its domestic politics.
Andhra Pradesh already has 2,067 acres of land allocated for a 6,600 Mw (6.6 Gw) nuclear power plant.
Back to the conventional aspects of the Budget now. This string of what might be described as boring Budgets underlines consistency, and consistency is a good thing. No sharp shifts or policy initiatives.
A Budget, after all, is meant to be a government's annual statement of accounts.
The era when it used to set out the government's evolving views on political economy, especially reform, ended some time back. There are two reasons for it.
One, that political economy is now fronted by the political leadership, read Prime Minister Modi. And second, there is already deep scepticism built into the public opinion when it comes to stirring announcements in the Budget.
The point that P Chidambaram once raised or sort of reflected on: What matters, outlays or outcomes, now tempers expectations from the Budget. In the past 11 years, the most sweeping economic reforms were announced not in any Budget, but in a series of press statements during the pandemic.
Most of these, from the farm reform laws to labour codes, have lost their way. The first repealed, and the rest meandering through the systemic (I prefer that to bureaucratic) maze.
Those of us who were so excited by that flurry of reforms and hailed it as a true and virtuous example of not wasting a crisis are now chastened.
India's political economy is back to its basics. Or, let me be reckless enough to say, the Congress socialist basics.
The only headline-worthy highlight of this Budget, for example, will be the income tax relief for the enormously numerous lower ends of the middle classes: w=With annual income of Rs 12 lakh to Rs 24 lakh.
This is a far cry from that audacious Ronald Reaganesque tax cut for the corporations in 2019, hoping to light up fresh entrepreneurial fires.
Privatisation is forgotten and buried. Over the past months, the prime minister has claimed credit for the public sector undertakings doing much better under him than his predecessors. And over the past week, he has repeatedly used metaphors borrowed from the Congress/UPA and the AAP, respectively: Inclusive growth and 'aam aadmi'.
That insertion of 'secular and socialist' that Indira Gandhi made in the Preamble of our Constitution through her illegitimate, sixth-year Lok Sabha now has a bipartisan stamp of approval.
And at least one of the two, socialism, will continue to be observed in letter and spirit.
Disclaimer: These are Shekhar Gupta's personal views.
Feature Presentation: Rajesh Alva/Rediff.com
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