Thread by @sway_hi

What does #Budget2019 say about the GOI's vision of New India:
1) India is now truly treading the welfare route - pensions by the state to ever larger groups of people, farmers, small shopkeepers. Interest subvention to women in SHG.

2) The money required for more & more infra development, the socialist schemes will come from : Direct Taxes, Disinvestment and Borrowing.
Direct Taxes and Disinvestment are common tricks, only new trick is the borrowing in this budget.

3) The Disinvestment Well of PSUs will run dry in the next 2 years. Given GOI's voracious appetite for welfare schemes where will the money for these schemes come from in the future? Will mules called "Tax Payers" die to fund the govt? @narendramodi @nsitharaman

4) Tax on crude is a revenue source, therefore it has been kept out of GST to tamper with willy nilly. The logic that this is done to stop deflation is BS. The best cure for a deflationary economy is reduction of Interest Rates and Quatitative Easing and not petrol prices!

5) Ideally the GOI should have laid out framework for increasing the TAX PIE by creating more companies and jobs. The companies bring in more corporate tax, the jobs bring in Income Tax. GOI should have given a number based plan for increasing this year on year!

6) 3 sectors: Aviation, Tourism and Textile are mass employment generators. A random Textile mill can employ a 1000 plus people, generating jobs and revenue for govt. Despite this Aviation, Textile and Tourism are not receiving the interest they should.

7) Govt needs to create an environment where each states competes on tourist flow, where each city boasts of Heritage sites. Why fix our vision to just 17 cities? Can a country like India now generate 100 odd cities with heritage worth talking about? @nsitharaman

@nsitharaman 8) Instead of focusing on these 3 sectors for future employment and revenue the govt is busy burdening the over burdened tax payer. The Income Tax surcharge on income over 2 crore doesn't just affect the super rich incidentally.

9) contd..it affects FPIs which were the core group govt wanted to tax. But it also affects everyone else whose income from any source in any year, hits the threhsold of 2 crore and above. Eg. a family with an income of 10 lakhs which sells its inheritance.

10) In that way this tax is also an amalgamation of the much maligned Inheritance Tax. So any income whether from salary or capital gain will fall under this. And this makes the tax more widespread and not only for the super rich!

In a nutshell : we are now well and truly in a Welfare Spiral where more and more socialist spend will be financed by rapidly increasing taxes! How's that for a Robinhood Budget? @PMOIndia @FinMinIndia @narendramodi @nsitharaman @arunjaitley