By M L Satyan

Coimbatore, July 25, 2024: The National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government has presented its budget for FY2024-25. The key announcements include:

• Skilling and Employment Initiatives: Five new schemes with a budget of 2 lakh crore (2 trillion) rupees aim to upskill and create employment opportunities for 41 million youth over the next five years. A new scheme will offer a one-month wage of up to 15,000 rupees to those joining the formal sector, benefiting 21 million youngsters.

• Internship Program: It will provide internships at the top 500 companies to 10 million youth over five years. Interns will receive 5,000 rupees per month along with a one-time assistance of 6,000 rupees.

• Employment-Linked Incentives: The government will introduce three new schemes to offer employment-linked incentives.

• Agriculture Funding: An allocation of 1.52 trillion rupees has been made for agriculture and allied sectors. The plan includes helping 10million farmers adopt natural farming practices within two years and releasing 109 new crop varieties.

• FDI Rules: Simplified FDI regulations are aimed at boosting inflows, prioritizing investments, and promoting the use of the rupee.

• Purvodaya Initiative: The government will launch the Purvodaya scheme for the comprehensive development of Bihar, Jharkhand, West Bengal, Odisha, and Andhra Pradesh.

• Student Loans: E-vouchers worth I million rupees will be issued to 100,000 students for interest subvention of 3% on their loans.

• Housing: Three crore additional houses are planned for rural and urban areas, with necessary allocations made to support this initiative.
• Special packages: The finance minister announced a 260 billion rupees boost for highways in Bihar and has announced the allocation of 150 billion financial support for the development of the new Andhra Pradesh capital, Amaravati.

Criticisms Galore

The Opposition criticised the Union Budget 2024, alleging that the BJP-led NDA government was trying to appease its allies while neglecting the states not ruled by it. Referring to the Budget as a “Kursi Bachao” (save the chair) one, Rahul Gandhi said that it made “hollow promises” to the allies of the BJP at the expense of other states. The Congress party also claimed that it was driven by “political compulsions”, and was focused towards “posturing than action”.

The Congress leaders alleged that the Union Budget shared similarities with the party’s manifesto for the Lok Sabha elections. Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge said that the “copycat budget” could not copy his party’s justice agenda properly. Former finance minister and senior Congress leader P Chidambaram also echoed the same thought, saying that he was glad that Finance Minister had “virtually adopted the Employment-linked incentive (ELI) outlined on page 30 of the Congress Manifesto”.

Jairam Ramesh, Congress general secretary in-charge of communications, also claimed that Nirmala Sitharaman had taken a leaf out of the Congress manifesto, but “in their trademark style”, the ELI scheme has been designed to “grab headlines with arbitrary targets” rather than a programmatic guarantee.

The Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi (MVA) parties slammed the Union Budget, alleging that the state was neglected and that the people would give a befitting reply to the BJP in the assembly polls this year. “I can understand the BJP wanting to save its government and giving Bihar and Andhra Pradesh a huge sum of the budget. But what is Maharashtra’s fault? That we are the largest taxpayer? What did we get against what we contributed?” Shiv Sena leader Aaditya Thackeray questioned.

Akhilesh Yadav said that the state’s farmers had received nothing but the BJP’s earlier promises of doubling their income. He said that UP did not even have a “mandi” for the farmers.

“This budget is aimed at saving Narendra Modi’s position. It is a budget for the NDA, not for India,” senior TMC leader Kalyan Banerjee said. TMC national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee also said that West Bengal had been “constantly tortured and deprived.” Abhisek in his speech gave a new meaning for each letter of the word Budget as described below:

• The letter B means Betrayal. He said that the budget has betrayed the non-BJP parties.
• The letter U means Unemployment. He said that the unemployment rate has been increasing from the time BJP came to power and this problem is not addressed.
• The letter D means Deprive. He said that the most vulnerable sections of the society are deprived of the benefits of this budget.
• The letter G means Guarantee and Ghotala (scam). During the election campaign “Modi Guarantees” were announced throughout the country but nothing has been fulfilled. And there have been many scams during the BJP regime and the most serious one was “electoral bond scam”.
• The letter E means Eccentric. During the past 10 years of the BJP’s rule the whole country has witnessed the eccentric behaviours of Modi and BJP leaders.
• The letter T means Tragedies. Abhishek drew the attention of the Speaker of the Lok Sabha that there have been many tragedies like killings of jawans, natural disasters and train accidents etc. during the past 10 years. He pointed out that when a tragedy occurs in non-BJP ruled state, the BJP considers it as an “act of fraud”. But when a tragedy occurs in BJP-ruled states, BJP considers it as an “act of God”. According to him the partiality shown by the pro-BJP Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha Speakers is also a tragedy.

Senior journalist Sujit Nair said, “This budget has breached Article 15(1) in which it is mentioned: “The State shall not discriminate against citizen on grounds only of religion, race, caste, sex, place of birth or any of them.” The conclusion drawn is that this budget is not for India but only for AP and Bihar.”

Today the survival of BJP’s rule depends mainly on the support of Nitish-Naidu duo. In order to remain in power, almost all non-BJP ruled states are deprived of certain pending as well as new financial support. Surprisingly, some BJP-ruled states also have been sidelined.

So, it is time for all citizens to know that voting for “vision-less politicians and political party” leads the country to disaster. With Rabindranath Tagore let us invoke, “Into the heaven of true freedom, O God, let my country awake.”