Regular Or Interim Budget? Modi Unveils Election Manifesto Budget

The Modi government, through its interim Budget, has tried to address all the constituencies that matter in an election year.

It might not have rolled out the widely-anticipated universal basic income, but the farmers, the middle class, the unorganized work force and SMEs stand to gain, as per the Budgetary provisions.

Farm distress has been a recurrent theme in the interiors and as was widely anticipated, the government has sought to replicate Telengana’s Rayutu Bandhu scheme.

A PM Kisan Samman Nidhi will now provide direct income for farmers having land up to 2 hectares.

The government has a historic plan called Prime Minister Kisan Yojna. Farmers who have less than two acres will get a support of Rs 6,000. An amount of Rs 2,000 will be directly transferred to the accounts of farmers,” Union Finance Minister – officiating for Arun Jaitley – announced in his Budget speech. A sum of Rs 75,000 crore has been announced for the scheme.

The scheme, however, will not be extended to agricultural labourers and tenants, and thus questions are being raised over the efficacy of the proposed scheme.

One announcement that received a thunderous applause from the MPs in Parliament, amid chants of ‘Modi-MOdi’ for several minutes, was the sop to the middle class whereby those having incomes of RS 5 lakh will not have to pay taxes. In fact, with specific investments, one earning upto Rs 7 lakh can earn the rebate.

An estimated 3 crore population is likely to benefit from this.

Similarly, the provision of pensions of Rs 3,000 for workers above the age of 60 is likely to benefit a huge section of the population.

SMEs too have got benefits.

The demand to reduce corporate taxes to 25 per cent has not been addressed.

The wide-ranging prescription, in fact, is being dubbed as a regular Budget even though it was officially called as an interim Budget.

Goyal’s speech, incidentally, was the shortest in the Modi regime.