Budget 2025: FM dangles carrots to poll-bound Bihar, but still insufficient

In this year’s Budget, the Union finance minister has proposed to set up a ‘Makhana Board’, greenfield airports, provide central financial assistance for Kosi canals and set up a national institute for food technology in Bihar.

Makhana, known as fox nuts or lotus seeds, are grown in Mithilanchal but processed and packed elsewhere, mostly in industrial centres in Maharashtra. A Makhana Board, claimed RJD MP Manoj Kumar Jha, existed earlier while Anupam, founder of Sanyukt Yuva Morcha, claimed that several past budgets had made promises of promoting the makhana; therefore, the announcement on 1 February, 2025 is neither new nor exciting.

The media should ask the prime minister what happened to his public promise, made in 2015, of giving a special grant of Rs 1.25 lakh crore, he added. Others from Bihar in the national capital pointed out that Bihar was struggling with lack of decent employment opportunities. It needs more trains and faster trains and not more airports.

The sugar mills shut down for years need to be revived. The state needs industry, better facilities for education and hospitals and provide a major push to the small and marginal farmers in the state. So, what has been included in the union budget, they say, is really a joke.

Pointing out the bullet train project between Ahmedabad and Mumbai, despite hundreds of trains and flights connecting the two cities, is going to cost the country over Rs one lakh crore, they wonder why Bihar does not deserve more and faster trains. “Every year the media show pictures of overcrowded trains to and from Bihar but we are being asked to be content with ‘makhana’ board and a food technology institute, they fumed. The government’s focus is more on developing Gujarat and Odisha, they complained.

Recently when the union minister for rural development and panchayati raj Giriraj Singh, who is a BJP MP from Begusarai, was asked why Bihar was denied a textile park to benefit the large community of weavers, he parried the inconvenient question and admonished the newsman for asking ‘negative’ questions. Union ministers from Bihar are finding it difficult to defend the indifference of the union government and budget proposals are unlikely to make their lives easier.

Bihar is slated to go to polls in November, 2025. Out of the 243 Assembly seats, BJP has a strength 74 MLAs, JD(U) has 43 and the RJD has 75 seats.

These are the budget proposals for Bihar announced today in the union budget:

New Makhana Board: The Board will aim to improve production, processing, value addition, and marketing of makhana.

Food processing: The budget proposals offered Bihar a National Institute of Food Technology, Entrepreneurship and Management.

Airports: The budget makes a vague reference to develop greenfield airports on undeveloped land and the expansion of Patna airport, which is difficult because it is located in the middle of the city and a brownfield airport at Bihta on the outskirts of Patna where there are pre-existing runways and terminal buildings.

Western Kosi canal project: Financial support for the Western Kosi Canal Project, an irrigation project in the Kosi river basin, in Mithilanchal region.