Modi’s Budget Protected Government Finances, Not Middle-Class Households
For years, India’s middle class has been told to adjust, to endure, to sacrifice for a larger national good. We did. We paid higher fuel prices, accepted rising education fees, absorbed crushing healthcare bills, and quietly adjusted our household budgets again and again. We swallowed the bitter medicine in the belief that relief would eventually follow. This year’s budget should have been that moment. It was not.
Union Budget 2026 once again chose to protect government finances while leaving middle-class households to fend for themselves. The macro numbers look neat. The deficit is under control. Debt ratios are improving. Markets are reassured. But for families balancing EMIs, school fees, petrol bills, and medical insurance, the budget reads like a document written in a different country.
The anger is not about ideology. It is about survival and dignity. Salaried Indians are not asking for freebies. They are asking for fairness. A higher standard deduction was possible and would have directly eased monthly pressure. Fuel cess relief was feasible and would have reduced the cost of living across everything from groceries to commuting. Education and healthcare, now painfully expensive, needed targeted support. None of this arrived.
Instead, the budget leaned heavily on announcements. Schemes, missions, committees, corridors, pilot projects. On paper, they sound impressive. In real life, they take years to start, longer to matter, and many never fully spend the money allocated to them. That is the uncomfortable truth no one likes to admit. Announced money is not spent money. And unspent money quietly protects the treasury without helping households.
This is why the middle class feels cheated. The government finds room for grand plans that may or may not materialise, but somehow cannot find room for direct relief that would show up immediately in our lives. We are asked to celebrate stability while our kitchen budgets become tighter each month.
The disappointment runs deeper than one budget. It has been building over years. The UGC rules controversy. Farm regulations that ignored ground realities. Transport rules that added compliance without consultation. Rising costs of education and healthcare with little protection for those who pay taxes honestly and receive little in return. Promises like population control legislation or a meaningful UCC vanished somewhere along the way. Even EWS support feels insufficient when costs keep climbing.
The middle class sent a warning shot in 2024. It was restrained, dignified, and patriotic, just like the middle class itself. But that message seems to have been ignored. State election wins are now being read as approval. They are not. Voting compulsions at the state level do not erase national frustration. Silence should not be mistaken for satisfaction.
There is a dangerous arrogance creeping in, the belief that the middle class has nowhere else to go and will adjust endlessly. That belief is wrong. Patience is not infinite. Sacrifice without reciprocity turns loyalty into resentment. Bitter medicine works only when the patient believes the doctor cares.
Narendra Modi has often spoken about trust between the government and citizens. That trust is fraying. Not because people oppose reform, but because reform has become a one-way street. The state demands discipline, while households are denied breathing room. The treasury is protected, but families feel exposed.
This was the budget where the government could have said, “We hear you.” It could have shown that fiscal discipline and household relief are not enemies. It chose not to. That choice will have consequences.
The middle class does not want lectures. It wants acknowledgment. It does not want slogans. It wants relief. And it does not want to be told, once again, to wait patiently while others are asked to wait for nothing.
Listen now, or risk losing the very backbone that carried India through every difficult phase with quiet resilience.
