With eye on Delhi, BJP banks on new I-T rates
I BUDGETING FOR POLLS Not only Opposition, ally JD(U) also says Budget delivers too little
After listening to 160 minutes of Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s Budget speech, Treasury and Opposition MPS trooped out of the Lok Sabha, trying to decipher the central message of the Budget 2020-21. Some with keener interest in ancient history said they were surprised the finance minister suggested the hieroglyphs on Harappan seals had been deciphered.
The Narendra Modi government had presented its 2015 Budget a fortnight after its drubbing in the Delhi Assembly polls, jettisoning its promise of reform to turn to “garib kalyan”, or welfare of the poor, as its leitmotif.
Five years on, the Delhi Assembly polls, a week away, weighed on its mind as it promised new tax slabs to benefit the middle class. While Opposition Congress and Trinamool Congress released data to dispute the claim that it will lead to any savings for the salaried class, the announcement made BJP MPS from Delhi happy. Those from the Hindi heartland said they were unsure about the message they would take back to their constituencies.
There were concerns about subsidies on food and fertiliser being reduced, as also dwindling budgetary allocations towards the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MNREGS). Opposition MPS pointed out the government had failed to spend last year’s allocation for the PM Kisan Samman Nidhi Yojana (PM-KISAN).
The Janata Dal (United), a BJP ally which faces an Assembly polls in less than nine months in Bihar, was more forthright in its criticism. It issued a statement that said “more could have been done to tackle the ongoing farmers’ and rural distress”. The Trinamool Congress’s Derek O’brien said it was puzzling Sitharaman, given the poor agriculture growth rate, has stuck to the deadline of doubling farmers’ income by 2022.
The 2020 Budget is important, as was the 2015 — these were the first full Budgets of the respective new governments presented in a year with the fewest Assembly polls, just two, and the government was expected to show the courage to take up reforms and new schemes. It couldn’t in 2015, and it hasn’t in 2020.
If in the 2015 Budget, the then finance minister, Arun Jaitley, announced reining in of inflation as its highlight, ruling party MPS struggled to find any assurance from Sitharaman on checking price rise at a time when CPI inflation is over 7 per cent and food inflation is over 10 per cent.
The government is also set to face challenges in disinvesting LIC and other public sector undertakings not just from Opposition parties, but also from within the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). “We strongly oppose the government's proposal to sell a portion of its holding in LIC,” All-india Life Insurance Employees Federation General Secretary Rajesh Nimbalkar said.
Senior Congress leader P Chidambaram termed it “panic privatisation” to plug revenue shortfalls. Other Opposition leaders said the plan to sell off LIC was a pretext to compensate the states, akin to the Centre dumping the
burden of economic slowdown and demonetisation on states.
They pointed out states' share of tax revenue was 19 per cent lower than the projections made last year. In 2020-21, the FM plans to share even less than what she projected last year. Clearly, relations between the Centre and states are set to get strained further.
The Swadeshi Jagran Manch, an RSS affiliate, opposed the announcement that the government will encourage foreign direct investment (FDI) in education, saying it is a “bad idea” and will lead to “westernisation” of education. The Laghu Udyog Bharati, another RSS affiliate, welcomed creation of ~1,000-crore fund to promote exports of MSME products.
The BJP’S core supporters, however, exulted on social media at the proposed setting up of an Indian Institute of Heritage and Conservation. “Five archaeological sites in Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Assam, Gujarat, and Tamil Nadu would be developed with on-site
museums,” she said. All these states are either Bjp-ruled, or in the case of Tamil Nadu, by its ally AIADMK.
Ministers congratulated the FM for increased budgetary allocations for the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir. Chidambaram said: “Money is no substitute for democratic freedom”.
In an interesting claim during her speech, the finance minister said the words from the Indus script, which are all hieroglyphics, had been deciphered, and how entrepreneurial spirit is age old. She also termed the Indus Valley Civilisation as “Saraswati Sindhu civilisation”, which drew a sharp reaction from DMK chief MK Stalin.
He said the Budget is more of a cultural imposition. “The BJP government, which is keen on Hindi imposition in anything... has called the Indus Valley Civilisation 'Saraswathi Sindhu Civilisation in the Budget,” Stalin said in a statement. “This Budget is of no use to Tamil Nadu and the Tamil people,” he said.