The state budget presented in the Assembly on Thursday is indicative of two things — one, the Democratic Front government is not making an attempt to woo voters for the forthcoming state elections, and two, it seems to have given up the race to the BJP-Shiv Sena combine which thrashed the Congress-NCP alliance in the Lok Sabha elections in May.

The fatalism demonstrated by the state cabinet was absent in only a few schemes announced in the budget — that of the R660 crore reserved for some populist schemes. But even that was opposed by the finance department bureaucrats who felt that this was an extravagance that a bankrupt state can ill-afford. Nevertheless, the state cabinet bullied the finance department and went ahead with its schemes.