As an exercise in mass sycophancy by the business community, the Union Budget is hard to beat. No sooner does the finance minister (FM) finish his budget speech in Parliament, corporate captains fall over each other to hail the budget on news channels. The sycophancy climaxes the following day in ghost-written newspaper columns where industrialists, stock brokers and sundry intellectuals discuss how the budget will “torque up India Inc” and help India “hit growth milestone(s)” while showing the “vision to propel India to double-digit growth and make the country a manufacturing hub of the world” (all snippets taken from the March 1st issue of a leading business daily).