'Nirmala Sitharaman missed the ball': Shashi Tharoor says there's nothing in Budget 2026 that satisfies him as a Malayalee

Shashi Tharoor

• Tharoor criticizes Union Budget 2026–27 for lacking vision and welfare focus.
• Tharoor: Budget speech ignored middle class and regional issues.
• Sensex fell sharply after the Budget speech, raising market concerns

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Congress leader Shashi Tharoor on Sunday delivered a sharp critique of the Union Budget 2026–27, questioning its vision, impact on trade, welfare priorities and regional representation, while using cricketing metaphors to describe what he saw as its shortcomings.

When asked whether Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had “hit it out of the park” or “missed the ball completely and been stumped,” Tharoor remarked, "I don't know if she's been stumped yet, but she certainly seems to have missed the ball. In one or two places, she may have got edges, but I'm not quite sure that we've got anything off the meat of the bat so far."

Reacting to a Congress report released ahead of the Budget that flagged rising inequality and alleged a rollback of welfare measures, Tharoor said clarity was missing in the speech. “…Welfare measures were not specified, except for the reference to the Mahatma Gandhi Gram Swaraj Yojana. What is interesting is that they took away Mahatma Gandhi’s name from the Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme and applied it to another alleged village development scheme. I’d like to see what exactly comes out of it and what kind of allocations it has,” he said.

He noted that several assessments would have to wait until the full Budget document was available. “Some of these conversations perhaps need to await the full budget document, which I obviously haven’t seen because I’ve just come out of Parliament after hearing the speech. But, as I said, I am not sure that she has paid attention to the kinds of things that voters and politicians normally pay attention to. For example, there was absolutely nothing for the middle class or the lower middle class that one could hear...”

In a separate interaction with PTI, Tharoor described the Budget speech as lacking coherence and direction. "Well, the speech certainly was completely short of an overall vision. What was it supposed to be about? Was it supposed to be proclaiming a new reform era? It didn't do that. Was it supposed to be performing some sort of belt-tightening? It didn't say that. What was it all about? It was a series of subheadings, as I said. But there was no clear unifying vision."

He also expressed concern over the market reaction following the speech. "And I'm sorry to say that I hear very disappointing news from the stock markets, with the Sensex crashing by several hundred points, or a thousand points. And this is something which we all think is particularly troubling, because you want there to be a certain buoyancy in the economy after a budget speech. I hope that the full detailed budget document will give us cause for reassurance because I didn't hear any in the speech."

On the political front, Tharoor said he expected greater focus on states heading into elections. "I thought names of Kerala and Tamil Nadu would be heard a lot in this Budget speech because of coming elections, but that did not happen," he told PTI.

Tharoor added, "There is nothing in this Budget that makes me satisfied as a Malayalee."