Book excerpt: The Government of India spends about 15% of India’s GDP, which translated into a whopping expenditure budget of Rs. 48.2 trillion for 2024-25, including Rs. 11.11 trillion on capital expenditures, another 11.6 trillion on interest payments, more than Rs. 4.2 trillion on subsidies like food and fertilisers, over Rs. 5 trillion on centrally sponsored programmes in the states and many other expenditures. The budget expenditures impact everyone, individuals, households, workers, businesses and everything we care about–growth, inflation, welfare and governance of the country. This book explains everything relating to the expenditures programmes of the government. The government’s tax proposals generate all-round interest. Companies worry about tax on their goods, profits, equities and bonds. Households and individuals look at the budget speech proposals how their salaries, savings and capital gains are going to be affected. The wider investment community wants to figure out the government's disinvestment, privatisation, dividends and other non-tax receipts. All the tax, non-tax, disinvestment and privatisation proposals and performance of the government have been thoroughly analysed and commented upon in the book. The economists, media, banks, foreign portfolio investors, investment managers, brokerages and everyone else with a direct or indirect stake in India’s economy, savings, credit, financial markets and any other macroeconomic aspect watch very carefully, in addition to expenditure and tax proposals, the proposals of the budgets impacting macroeconomy. This book presents an in-depth analysis of the macro-economic performance of the Indian economy and the implications of budget proposals. The book is organised in four parts and 40 chapters. The first part has all the big budget numbers with highlights, the second part brings out the results and outcomes of Budget 2022-23, the third part takes a serious look at the implementation of Budget 2023-24 and the fourth part critically analyses the implications of the proposals in Budget 2024-25 presented on 23 July. All the three budgets have also been rated on a sound framework taking into account 2022-23 actuals, 2023-24 revised estimates and 2024-25 budget estimates.