New Delhi, Feb. 2 -- India kept calm and carried on this fiscal year, with a GST spur for retail offtake, an urgency for foreign trade deals and a few tariff tweaks for factory-cost relief making up the bulk of our response to trade adversity.

That spirit prevails in India's budget for 2026-27 too. It marks a shift in fiscal policy from annual deficit calibration to medium-term debt reduction. Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman's last budget offered a tax stimulus, kept up infra spending and managed to squeeze the Centre's deficit to 4.4% of GDP even as nominal growth softened.

Ever since covid, capex has played a heroic role in the economy's expansion. The latest budget dares not depart from that formula. Its Rs.12.2 trillion capex pl...