Promises in Union Budget 2019-20: Rhetoric and Reality

There has been a development disparity between rural and urban areas in terms of availability of basic services and socio-economic development infrastructures. Rural India is facing certain challenges for last many years such as poor infrastructure, lack of basic amenities, agrarian distress, migration and unemployment. The NITI Aayog’s three-year action agenda promises to double the farmers’ income by 2022 with the base year as 2015-16.

However, the total Union Budget expenditure as a percentage of GDP of the country has stagnated over the last six years at around 13 per cent of GDP. The allocations for Rural Development and agriculture have not seen any increase in this budget. However, Finance Minister in her budget speech claimed that this budget is meant for “Gaon, Gharib, aur Kisan” without making any additional allocation.

For rural development, there are major flagship programmes such as Mahatma Gandhi National Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana/NRLM, Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY) and Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana (PMGSY). These schemes are supposed to contribute significantly towards poverty alleviation by diversifying incomes and by acting as a support during periods of agrarian distress and creating employment.

However, there is no increase in the allocation of the flagship programmes in this budget. There is no increase in the budget allocation of Department of Rural Development and its flagship programmes in this budget. This budget has announced that in the second phase of PMAY-G, (2019-20 to 2021-22), 1.95 crore houses are proposed to be provided to the eligible beneficiaries along with amenities like toilets, electricity and LPG connections.

The allocation for education sector in this budget remains the same. Budget speech says that New National Education Policy (NEP) is to transform India’s higher education system but it is also without any additional budgetary commitment. Union Government’s expenditure on health as a proportion of GDP has been stagnant at around 0.3 per cent since 2014-15. The share of Child Budget as a proportion of Total Union Budget has maraginally increased to 3.29 in the main budget for 2019-20 from 3.25 per cent in the Interim Budget for 2019-20.

Table 1: Budget Allocation for Social Sector Schemes and Programmes (Rs.in crore)

Source: Compiled by CBGA from Union Budget documents, various years

There has been poor responsiveness of the Budget towards the vulnerable sections of the population (such as women, children, Dalits, Adivasis, religious minorities and persons with disabilities). Budget allocations for SCs and STs remain below the stipulated population norm of 16 per cent and 8.6 per cent. Action Agenda, a key NITI Aayog report (2017), says that Muslims constitute the largest religious minority (at 14% of the total population of our country) and lag behind others in terms of economic, health and educational parameters. The participation of Muslims in salaried jobs is also low. Only 0.17% of the total Union Budget of 2019-20 has been allocated for the development of minorities whereas religious minorities constitute 21% of total population as per Census 2011.

Figure 1: Allocation for Ministry of Minority Affairs (MoMA) in Total Union Budget (in per cent)

Source: Compiled by CBGA from Union Budget documents, various years.

Although, the allocation for the MoMA has remained unchanged in this budget, the fund utilisation has increased to 96.7 in 2017-18 from 74 per cent in 2016-17.

Figure 2: Budget Allocation and Utilisation by the Ministry of Minority Affairs (Rs. In crore)

Source: Compiled by CBGA from Union Budget documents, various years.

For educational improvement of Minorities, scholarship schemes are very important. However, there is a huge gap between the total number of applications received and scholarship provided annually by Ministry of Minority Affairs. Nearly, 85 lakh students belonging to minority communities in 2017-18 left out of these schemes. Evidently, the Government could not make scholarship schemes for minorities demand-driven despite the recommendation of the Departmental Standing Committee of 2018.

Figure 14.3: Gap in Number of Scholarship Applications Received and Scholarship Provided -2017-18 (in lakh)

Source: Departmentally Standing Committee on Social Justice- Demand for Grants, Ministry of Minority Affairs 2018-19

The newly formed Union Government announced that they are going to provide 1 crore scholarship annually under the umbrella scholarship programme. However, total allocations for Pre-Matric, Post-Matric and Merit-Cum-Means declined in this budget.

Figure 4: Budget Allocation for Scholarship Schemes under Ministry of Minority Affairs (in Rs. crore)

Source: Compiled by CBGA from Union Budget documents, various years.

Further, The Departmental Standing Committee on Social Justice, 2018-19 raised concerns about inadequacy of the amount of Pre-Matric, Post-Matric and Merit-cum-means Scholarships. The unit cost for scholarships has not been revised since the inception of the schemes (in 2007-08). Only Rs.1000 per annum is given to day scholars in the Pre-Matric Scholarship Scheme. The scheme for Post-Matric Scholarship provides the financial support of Rs.7, 000 per annum in terms of admission and tuition fee for classes XI and XII and maintenance allowance of Rs.380 per month and Rs.230 per month for hosteller and day scholars respectively. However, the unit costs were not increased in the budget and were not made inflation indexed.

The data on status of recruitment of minorities (in Central Government, public sector undertakings, banks, etc.) collated by MoMA shows that percentage of minorities recruited in the total recruitment reported to be 6.24, 6.91, 7.89, 8.56 and 7.5 per cent from 2011-12 to 2015-16 against the provision of 15 per cent share for minorities by Prime Minister’s New 15 Point Programme. The Government has not reported the data related to recruitment of minorities in the public jobs after 2015-16. Also, religion-wise disaggregated data on jobs is not reported in public domain which would have been helpful to assess the status of representation of Muslims in the public employment. It clearly reflects that minorities, particularly Muslims have not been given fair share in the recruitment process.

Further, implementation of key policy initiatives after the Sachar Committee Report (2005), like setting up a National Data Bank, Equal Opportunity Commission (EOC) and constructing Diversity Index remained unimplemented. The reports of working groups on setting up of an EOC and Diversity Index have been submitted to the government before 2014. It aimed at to promote inclusion of several excluded communities including Muslims in public institutions.

[The author works with Centre for Budget and Governance Accountability and is Advisor to Institute of Policy Studies and Advocacy.]

[1] Author works with Centre for Budget and Governance Accountability and Advisor to Institute of Policy Studies and Advocacy.