The finance minister has tried to appease every constituency with the Union Budget for 2007-08. While there are major announcements for agriculture, manufacturing and the services sector, he has also unveiled a sizable bag of goodies for the youth. The allocation for education has been increased by 34.2% and efforts have been made to curb school drop-out through merit-cum-means scholarships and by attempts at modernising vocational training institutes such as the ITIs. The increase in education cess for secondary and higher education should also bring some cheer, particularly to students from economically weaker sections of our society. Significantly, there is also an allocation for the physically challenged.

The best news—there is a sizable cut in excise duty on aerated drinks from 24% to16%. The duty on ice-creams, pasta and chocolates has been lifted in toto. So the approaching summer months should witness a record consumption of these goodies.

Smokers may feel the brunt as taxes on tobacco products have been raised by 5%. Hopefully, this would deflect them to coffee and tea bars, where the FM has announced a cut in the central sales tax from 4% to 3%. To improve things further, he has put aside a corpus of Rs 100 crore to set-up a Special Purpose Fund for tea and coffee. We hope the same will be utilised for brewing better quality beverages, so that these can also be exported to other countries!

—The writers are first year students, Management Development Institute, Gurgaon