Pranab Mukherjee’s budget speech for 2012: a percentage play

Analyzing the word map of the  finance minister's budget speech turns out to be a rather dull and boring exercise. What jumps out at you is the word "percent". In fact, the entire budget speech can be summarized into four words - Propose, Duty, Percent, Crore. Coalition dharma or electoral compulsion?

Dinesh Trivedi’s railway budget as a word map

Last year, I had done word maps of Mamata Banerjee's railway budgets. This year, given the tamasha that was played out as an aftermath of the Railway budget presented by Dinesh Trivedi (who has since been forced to resign), it would be interesting to see what his focus was on, by creating a similar word …

Bhelpuri wala on the Ganges aka entrepreneurs at the bottom of the pyramid

This photo was taken at Shivpuri, a popular river rafting landing spot on the Ganges, near Rishikesh - a solitary Bhelpuri seller peddling his wares on the banks of the holy river. You will meet people like him all across India. Possibly, you (and me) will not give them a second glance. At worst, we …

No income tax returns for the salaried: more myth than reality

Every year the salaried class literally goes crazy computing and filing their tax returns. This year, the finance minister apparently has good news for them when he announced that if you have only salary income of below Rs 5 L, then you need not file  tax returns. So, are you really saved the trouble of …

Mamata Banerjee’s budget speeches as word clouds

India's railway budget is a much parsed document, and successive railway ministers have been known to be partial to their own constituencies and home states. Beyond that, what else are their focus areas? And how does that focus shift from year to year. I tried to garner a quick understanding of the changing trends in …