New Delhi, Feb. 1 -- Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman presented the Union Budget for 2026-27 on Sunday, 1 February, against the backdrop of renewed geo-economic disruptions affecting India.

With these pressures likely to spill into the coming financial year, the Budget offers a window into how the government plans to respond to a set of pressing challenges. In this five-part series, we use charts to examine the Budget's response to these pressures across 15 key concerns.

This part looks at tax, excise duty, and defence. Each topic has a pair of charts-one presenting the context the budget faced and the other showing what the Budget delivered.

Taxing times?

Nominal GDP growth slowed down to 8% in FY26 as inflation plunged during the...