Searching nuggets in budgets...

The word budget originates from the french 'bougette' which means a 'little bag'.
Every year, India eagerly waits for the Finance Minister to open his 'little bag' of carrots and sticks. I'm not aware of any other country where the budget is so eagerly expected, monitored, dissected, and generally analysed to death - why can't the Indian economic policy be largely decoupled from this yearly jamboree?
Speaking of deaths, the FM announced the loan waiver for farmers. I admit to not knowing much of agriculture, but it strikes me as strange that:
a) the scheme is tied to the size of the farm holding and not the size of the loan/ability to prepay and other more relevant parameters.
b) the scheme will encourage fiscal indiscipline and more 'scams' in future. If you know the government is benevolent in such matters, why would you repay?
c) Couldnt the FM come out with a scheme to bring more farmers into the institutional lending fold by giving relief to those in the net of unscrupulous moneylenders? Maybe he could have helped them transfer those loans to banks? Its the 25-40% interest on informal loans which is really killing the farmers. This way he could have acheived two objectives with one program.
d) Just wondering - If enough middle class salaried people with defaulting home loans had committed suicide, would the FM have given similar relief?
On the other hand, I'm quite amused at the critics - they're saying most of the measures are to ensure early elections. Fine. So when there is something in the budget for the common man, its called populist and election-focussed. When there is nothing, its denounced by the same people as having ignored the common man...!!

Overall.I think the FM was conservative. He could have taken bolder decisions in power,telecom, income tax, GST, but he seems to be having the US recession in mind.
I was disappointed to see nothing in it for Mumbai's infrastructure, but then thats more the rule than the exception.
Well. Thankfully we're past one more budget, and next time the 'little bag' opening will not be so important....