Opinion Side Show

While Chidambaram discussed taxation with the media,while Yashwant Sinha colourfully dismissed his Budget as “baazigari”,the shadow economy that Chidambaram can never hope to tax carried on business as usual.

I started surfing in the reasonably mainstream and then descended into the underworld. Outraged by the tax hike on air-conditioned restaurants,Sahara UP asked a student: “Would you take your girlfriend out,ever again?” “Never!” blared the embittered student. But meanwhile,STV Haryana News was investigating another aspect of the restaurant business. Ignoring Chidambaram’s Budget,it reported a raid on a restaurant in Bahadurgarh which rents out cabins to couples for Rs 200. Bang for buck and no tax comebacks.

And all the while Chidambaram was fielding questions in Delhi – including the leading question about Nitish Kumar’s gratitude,which would have interested viewers in Bihar – Mahua News was reporting loot,pillage and financial criminality from almost every one of the 38 districts of the state. In Begusarai,a huge cache of booze had come up in fishing nets cast into the Baghmati river. Not hooch,mind you. That would have been so routine. Booze,probably dumped to escape the attention of the excise department.

An engineer in the railway town of Koderma who had sinned brazenly and extensively for financial benefit — the keywords were “ghapla” and “bhugtan” — had finally been arrested. In Jhumri Telaiya,the town made famous by short wave radio,the “dhandabaaz” photographer Sonu Sardar – who is genuinely a young Sikh – was in custody for making fake voter ID cards.

In Samastipur,an official in the electricity department had received an SMS with a ransom demand for Rs 20 lakh. The SMS,which was displayed on the screen,naturally had the sender’s number. Considerately,it also provided the number of an account in the Bank of India into which the ransom money was to be paid. Not the best way to handle the financials of a crime,suggesting that this is a frame-up.

Leaving behind these colourful mofussil crimes and returning to Delhi,it’s outrageous,but two news channels continue to milk another crime for eyeballs. Headlines Today and Times Now both claimed a coup when the Rajya Sabha discussed the chopper deal,a story which neither of them can take credit for. Incidentally,Headlines Today also reported that the markets had given Chidambaram a “thumbs up,and were in the red midway through his speech.” A bit confusing,that.

The channel did better in a programme titled ‘Youngistan vs Chidambaram’,in which future CEOs and kids with smarts from IIT Powai,the Indian School of Business in Hyderabad and the Shri Ram College of Commerce in Delhi,opined on the Budget. Some of them talked solid sense,rooting for a tax on rich farmers and arguing that Narendra Modi’s model of exclusionist development cannot work on a national scale,while Chidambaram’s inclusiveness can.

But is a women’s bank inclusive or exclusionary? That’s just one of the foxy questions about a clever political Budget that no one got round to asking.