This was a budget the Government was not meant to present. They were supposed to give a simple statement of accounts and ask the Parliament for permission to make routine payments like salaries. However, we had an erstwhile Treasurer of BJP and old RSS member who not only gave a full-fledged budget but also a very long speech. In his speech, he underlined how the cow was the most important and how his Government has done everything for her. He talked about how wonderful Bollywood was and what a great film Uri, which is another nationalist war movie underlining the BJP agenda, is. There was no mention of minorities except for a sharp 30 per cent increase in allocation for the SC and ST.
It was understandably a budget prepared for the elections in May. The BJP, despite everything, remains a party for small traders, the upper caste and the middle class. However much it tries to bring in the poor and the farmer, it just can’t rise beyond tokenism. That is why we have a miserly `500 a month per household for the farmer who has less than 2 acres of land. The small business and the middle class garner all benefits starting with exemption from TDS for rental income below 2.4 lakhs a year, and from `40,000 on interest earned on deposits, the two houses instead of one for offsetting long term capital gains and the rebate to those earning less than 5 lakhs a year. The tragedy for Modi is that Goyal did not increase the slab from 2.5 lakhs and that is why almost all taxpayers feel cheated. It was an election promise which would go the way as so many others remained unfulfilled even in the last budget.
Another issue where the small middle class feels cheated is one concern that the budget does NOT address. And that is large scale unemployment. The budget speech must have been prepared by the former Finance Minister, who is unwell, but we had the new one who is only a part timer. That is why it misses out the biggest worry for young India. There is no new investment happening and that is why there are no new jobs being generated. It is just not enough to use irrelevant provident fund data to claim increase in jobs. It is also self-defeating to conceal NSSO datasets and analyses that show unprecedented levels of joblessness. The FM should have attacked this issue head on and indicated clearly that the government is mindful of it and will take big steps to create new employment.
The cow remains important. A national cow board was announced but with a meagre allocation. The Orissa and Bengal voter was addressed when a vegetarianism-obsessed Sarkar announced increased allocations for fisheries. Amit Shah wants increased numbers from the North East and therefore we see a substantial increase in central assistance there. The defence budget was the most surprising. While the FM spoke about taking it beyond `3 lakh crores for the first time, the increase is trivial and there are no further allocations for buying new equipment. An election year budget would have benefitted by some jingoistic announcements on new purchases of arms and ammunition. The Rafale setback might have played a role in this hesitant approach to India’s defence build-up.
The farmer in India is distressed. Increasing input costs, uncertain output prices, a broken MSP mechanism and a disastrous crop insurance system have left farmers extremely vulnerable. The budget could have really been generous to agriculture when the party seems to have lost on the rural vote. That might explain why the FM did not go whole hog in wooing the farmer. There is a 2 per cent interest rate rebate plus 3 per cent for well behaved borrowers, but this will only impact an insignificant 10 per cent who borrow from banks. Why is the dole restricted to a mere `500 a month for a farming household and why only for those who have less than 2 acres of land? What will this do to help farm distress? The guarantee of a reasonable income for all farming household would have been a game changer given the politics around the Universal Basic Income promised by the Congress.
Another major surprise was the complete neglect of education and health. The Prime Minister himself had been stressing on the health sector and Modicare. Despite such high level talk and in spite of the large scale criticism, what was intriguing about this budget speech was that it did not talk about health sector. There was no mention of increases in allocation to heath. The FM praised Ayushman and gave clearly wrong figures of the various AIIMS being built. He has increased honorariums for ASHAs and to Anganwadi workers, fulfilling a modest promise made by the PM last September. The FM also announced that the Jan Aushadhi scheme had been working to provide inexpensive drugs for patients. A meagre sum of little more than `27000 crores was announced for the ICDS.
In an election year, much more was expected. Ayushman or Modicare, as the party worker insists it to be called, was said to be a game changer that would bring health access to the forefront. The Prime Minister had put his personal weight behind the scheme. A special agency was launched, and there was a flurry of activity. The budget speech said a million patients had been treated under Ayushman already. That’s it. Nothing more on what was the impact, on why the scheme would alter the health landscape and how it would be scaled up. And that was all, as far as the health sector was concerned. Nothing on education. Has Modiji given up on Ayushman, as he seems to have on land acquisition, labour law reform, smart cities and Ram Mandir?
[The writer is Professor MCRHRDI, Government of Telangana]