The Economy and the Budget

V M Dandekar The finance minister says in his budget speech that the governnment "is deeply conscious of its special responsibility to protect the poorer sections of our society, especially in rural areas, from the burdens that would other- wise be forced upon them as the economy goes through the process of macro-economic stabilisation and economic restructuring". One suspects that the government is more deeply conscious of its special obligation to protect the establishment, which includes organised labour, especially in urban areas, from the burden of the rural poor.