K.V. Seetharamaiah
Being an election year, an interim budget has been presented by the Union Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman for straight six years. With budget presentation of 6 consecutive years, she has equalled herself with Morarji Desai. Her budget speech was completed in 56 minutes, shortest-ever. Focus is on youth and women empowerment. Fiscal deficit has been target pegged to 5.1 of the GDP, down from the revised estimate (5.8 per cent) in Financial Year 2024. The Income Tax slabs have been kept intact. The salaried class of people are not attractive votebank. Therefore, no government evinces much interest in giving relief to the salaried class commensurate with the needs of the day witnessing high inflation. This is an election year. Yet, the Finance Minister is not bothered about the votes of employees. Employees and retired persons are inured to the disappointment at not getting the tax relief. Sunitajadhav on X: “In every Budget poor gets subsidy, rich gets rebate, middle class watch TV and debate”. Housing scheme for the deserving middle class, focus on residential tenants, slums, chawls or unauthorized colonies are the features of the interim budget. Capital expenditure has been hiked to 11 per cent to Rs. 11.11 lakh crore. Capital expenditure is for acquisition, upgradation and maintenance of physical assets like property, plants, buildings, technology and equipment. It also includes investments on new projects. Hike in capital expenditure is good investment. The government will borrow Rs. 14.13 crore as against Rs. 15.43 crore in 2024 FY 24 to plug up the fiscal deficit of 5.1 per cent of GDP. The borrowing has been slashed by Rs. 1.30 crore. While borrowings are vital for development, too much and too fast growth of public borrowings places heavy financial burden paving for increased per capita debt. What ails the government from giving some relief by way of tax benefits to the people when crores of rupees have been confiscated from the raids conducted on the people who have hoarded wealth disproportionate to their known sources of income? The on-going raids on the people in possession of wealth disproportionate to their known sources of income must continue irrespective of their political affiliations. From the cash recovered from the corrupt politicians and bureaucrats, it can be surmised what has been recovered is only a tip of iceberg. Continued raids can yield much more. The rise in income from unaccounted wealth can be best put for infrastructure development besides giving tax benefits to the middle class. High-powered panel to address population growth challenges and demographic challenges is a well-conceived idea. The burgeoning population in India is not only on account of more and more babies born but also due to illegal migration from the countries like Myanmar and Bangladesh. The growing Muslim population is a challenge and is on the way to change the demographic character of the nation. The government is likely to present a white paper on the mismanagement of the economy prior to 2014. It is necessary to see the difference. What steps have been taken to resurrect the economy must be explained by the government and people are entitled to know how far the steps taken have yielded the better results. The white paper is expected to be presented next week. In the full-fledged budget to be presented after the election, the new government must take steps to give tax relief to the salaried class, contain the price rise and reduce the unemployment problem. Unemployment is the serious issue. It leads many people to swerve from right path.