The Forum of Free Enterprise is a non-political organization founded in 1956 by A. D. Shroff and has been established to educate public opinion in India on free enterprise and a democratic way of life. The Forum publishes booklets to further its objects. The following booklet titled “The Union Budget 1989-90” was published on March 20, 1989, and was authored by Nani A. Palkhiwala. The author dissects the Union Budget 1989-90 and points out various fallacies in the same. He argues that the budget should have removed four crying injustices by increasing the tax exemption threshold, abolishing or substantially reducing the tax on dividends which are paid out of profits on which the company has already paid the tax, granting liberty to banks and abolishing Section 115J of the Income Tax Act. The author points out that the Budget goes against the four major planks of the policy with which the Government started in 1985-(i) low rates of tax, (ii) simplification, (iii) stability, and (iv) liberalization. He stresses that we have now reached the dangerous point when the laws are made almost entirely by the bureaucracy, and Parliament has only a formal role to play in law. He further highlights the absence of any proposal for liberalization in the budget. The author goes on to draw attention to what the top priorities of the budget should have been-(i) education, (ii) family planning, (iii) balance of payments (foreign trade deficit), (iv) promotion of tourism to redress the balance, and (v) the problem of sick units. He concludes by stating that the Budget does not take a single step in the direction of the promised retreat from an overweening state and bureaucracy is larger and more intrusive than before.