Finance minister Ajit Pawar should be appreciated for holding out hope while presenting this year's state budget. He announced all possible doles and hefty allocations for welfare schemes in a shorter-than-usual speech as it seemed he didn't want to comment too much on the gloomy state of economic affairs.

But the budget's finality posed a challenge to Pawar and Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray's tripartite government to make the allocation available in the MVA's first year of governance by plugging a wide revenue-deficit gap. Pawar does expect to collect an additional income of R21,000 crore while estimating a deficit of R9,500 crore for the year 2020-21, which itself will be a demanding task when the economic downturn threatens a depression-like situation. Pawar accepted the realities of the economy, but did not chart out a fine-tuned course of recovery even though he had the opportunity to substantiate allegations that the BJP was wrong in its economic approach. This surprised many because the MVA, Pawar's NCP in particular, has a collective experience of presenting budgets.