The Indian Budget
By Justice Katju
Some people have asked me to write on the Indian budget presented in Parliament yesterday ( Tuesday, 22nd July ) by the Union Finance Minister
In my opinion the budget is really irrelevant, and therefore there is no purpose talking about it.
The test of every political activity and political system is one, and only one: does it raise the standard of living of the people ? Does it give them better lives ?
The basic problem of India is its massive poverty, its record and rising unemployment, its appalling level of child malnutrition ( every second child in India is malnourished, according to Global Hunger Index ), its skyrocketing prices of essential commodities, its almost total lack of proper healthcare, good education, and housing for the masses, etc. Will the budget abolish these, or even create a dent on them ? Will it narrow the gap between the handful of rich Indians ( who own half of India’s wealth ) and the Indian masses ? Not at all. Then how is the budget relevant to the vast majority of our people ? And if it is not relevant, why talk about it ?
However, one thing about the budget needs to be mentioned.
In the present Indian government the BJP does not have a majority in the Lok Sabha ( the lower House of Parliament), and has to rely on the crutches provided mainly by two parties which are its allies : Chandrababu Naidu’s TDP in Andhra Pradesh, and Nitish Kumar’s JDU In Bihar. Hence huge packages have been allocated to these parties in the budget : Bihar got Rs 26, 000 crores for infrastructure and Rs 11,500 crores for flood relief, while Andhra Pradesh got Rs 15,000 crores for developing the new capital of Amravati, plus huge amounts for completing the Polavaram irrigation project, and developing the infrastructures for two industrial corridors.
Thus the TDP and JDU are behaving like Shylock In Shakespeare’s play ‘Merchant of Venice’ who demanded a pound of flesh.
The INDIA opposition has rightly called these huge allocations to Bihar and Andhra Pradesh as appeasements to save the chair of the BJP, and have called it a ‘kursi bachao’ budget. The Congress President Kharge claimed that the budget ignored significant sections of the people e.g. the middle class, farmers, SCs and STs, etc, and did not address the issue of skyrocketing prices of essential commodities like food, fuel, etc.
The budget reminds one of the Munich Pact of 1938, which British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain thought that appeasing Hitler would bring peace to Europe, but which only whetted the appetite of Hitler, and hastened the advent of the Second World War.
Similarly, the appeasement policy in the budget will only whet the appetite of Naidu and Nitish, who, like Oliver Twist In Charles Dickens’ novel, will keep asking for more.
Also, it will motivate people in other states of India to make similar demands of huge sums of money, and begin agitations if they are not met. After all, several Indian states, not just Bihar, have floods in the monsoon season, and need funds to develop infrastructure
The problem, however, is that the Central Government is not a Kamadhenu cow having unlimited money its coffers
A time will soon come when the Central Government will have to say no to these growing demands, and then the meltdown of the Government will commence, and a reign like that of the later Moghuls will begin
