This piece is being written on the day of the budget speech, but is not about it. The reason is purely logistics. As I write, the budget is being presented to the cabinet. Once approved, the finance minister will present it in the national assembly. Until that deed is done, everything in the press is unproven hearsay. And by the time the speech is over, my deadline will have passed. Retrospective analysis is fair game, since the Economic Survey is already out, but we wrote on them as they broke.

There are bigger stories which make our local budgetary concerns almost irrelevant. When I read a story about our cash-starved government doling out two point three five trillion rupees in tax exemptions, my reaction is exactly like that of Ford Prefect to Arthur Dent when he hears his house is being knocked down in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Let them have their fun. Why? Because the planet itself is about to be demolished within seconds, and these two are the likely escapees.

This is what I tell myself whenever a clerk makes life hell. Within a few years, their jobs will be taken by artificial intelligence. You can tell yourself that too whenever your employer hires someone with less experience on a wage an order of magnitude higher than your almost redundant salary. When the ship goes down, you will remember you can swim and the rest cannot. Now to the much bigger story making all this noise redundant. Consider the stock market launch of SpaceX, aiming for a staggering worth of one point seven five trillion dollars. To secure this mountain of wealth without winning over thousands of wary buyers, Wall Street has worked a dark trick, laid bare by the American outlet........

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