Budget 2026: FM marches on Kartavya Path, balances ‘poll’itics & economics

Call it the coconut bit of the Budget — inside the outer shell of a long speech was some soft stuff that summed up the politics of this Budget.Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Bengal (all going to the polls early this year), Andhra Pradesh (governed by BJP ally TDP), Gujarat (the ‘home state’ of BJP’s big two, Modi and Shah) are among the major beneficiaries this time.To give the FM credit, the politics was mostly twinned with economic rationale. She announced a promotion scheme that’ll help coconut growers in Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Gujarat. This is good policy because coconut, which faces high demand, can be a major income earner.India needs its own supply of rare earths, if only to depend less on capricious Chinese. States in focus — Kerala, TN, Odisha (governed by BJP) and Andhra.A big help was the move to make fish catch in EEZs and high seas free of duty and classifying the sale of this catch in any foreign port as exports — that means higher income for the fishing community. States with some of the biggest fishing communities — Andhra, TN, Kerala, Bengal and Gujarat.Trains, that old favourite of Budget politics, except these days it’s high-speed trains, and the more of them India has, the better it is. FM’s promised 7 high-speed rail corridors. Places to be connected include Chennai (Tamil Nadu), Siliguri (Bengal) and Varanasi.