Balanching the interests of disparate coalition partners with equally extreme ideology and simultaneously swearing by the National Common Minimum Programme (CMP), the magna carta of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) Government, is no easy task and this is where the Pre-Budget Economic Survey has comprehensively failed. The authors of the survey in the North Block have not done a deft tightrope walk, oblivious to the fact that any open advocacy of too liberal economic reforms would result in backlash from allies within the coalition. Hence they toyed with the market mantra for efficient allocation of scarce resources to highlight the scarcity value of many public goods in general and infrastructure in particular, which demand colossal investments from concept to commissioning.