'Increase interest rate on small savings'

As a student and a working woman, 27-year-old Deepa Venkatesh was hardly enamoured of budgets. But "after I started managing my own house, it began to seem interesting to me."

She does not want the finance minister to increase the price of cooking gas. She wants him to increase interest rates on small savings and reduce the price of gold and silver. "Both my father and father-in-law live on their pension and the decline in interest rates has been a big blow to them."

She, however, says that the lifestyle of the Indian middle class has improved tremendously in the last ten years. "These days, we can think of taking a house loan for Rs 25 lakh (Rs 2.5 million) -- something my parents could never even dream of. They found it difficult to buy a house worth even Rs 800,000. We can afford a car, air-conditioner, and other luxury goods that the middle class did not even dream of a few years ago. You know, salaries were very poor ten years ago; but not anymore."

She feels the better lifestyle that she now enjoys is all because of Dr Manmohan Singh who started the reforms process. But she is not quite sure about what to expect from P Chidambaram. She only remembers that it was he who was responsible for reducing the price of rubber that affected many rubber cultivators in Kerala.

If she were handling the country's finances, she would do something good for the rural sector. "Even today, our villagers are very poor unlike those who live in the cities."

-- Shobha Warrier

Photograph: Sreeram Selvaraj

Budget 2004-05: Complete Coverage

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