New Delhi, Feb 1 (LAB): All India Congress Party has alleged that the present budget presented by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman today has done nothing to address the issues of unemloyed youth and people who have suffered huge losses due to the Pandemic.
Adressing the media persons today Former Union Finance Minister P.Chidambaram said that there was not a word in the Finance minster’s budget speech about any cash assistance to the very poor who have been pushed into extreme poverty and suffered immensely during the last two years; not a word for those who had lost their jobs; not a word about creating jobs for those whose education stopped at some stage at the school level. Not a word about reviving MSMEs that had shut down; not a word about distributing more food to combat malnutrition and hunger; not a word about cutting indirect taxes, especially GST, to contain inflation and bring down the prices of goods; and not a word about giving tax relief to the tax-paying middle class or the tax-bearing head of a household.”
“By any standard, today’s budget speech was the most capitalist speech ever read by a Finance Minister. The FM has mastered the jargon of capitalist economics. Read her speech again: count the number of times she used the words digital, portal, IT-based, paperless, database, ecosystem, global, atmanirbhar. The word ‘poor’ occurs twice in paragraph 6, and we thank the FM for remembering that there are poor people in this country, ” Mr Chidambram said.
India’s economy has not recovered yet to the level in the pre-pandemic year of 2019-20. In the last two years, millions of jobs have been lost, some perhaps forever. Approximately, 60 lakh MSMEs were closed down. In the two pandemic years, 84 percent of households have suffered a loss of income. Per capita income has declined from Rs 1,08,645 in 2019-20 to Rs 1,07,801 in 2021-22 (or even less). Per capita expenditure has declined from Rs 62,056 in 2019-20 to Rs 59,043 in 2021-22. An estimated 4.6 crore people have been pushed into extreme poverty, but the government has not addressed any of the issues in the budget.
Huge learning loss among school children, especially children who live in rural India and are enrolled in government schools. Malnutrition, stunting, and wasting among children has increased and India’s rank in the Global Hunger Index has fallen to 101 (out of 116 countries). The unemployment rates have reached 8.2 percent for Urban and 5.8 percent for Rural workers; WPI Inflation is estimated at 12 percent and CPI inflation at 5.3 percent.
“These hard facts should have been Addressed by the Finance Minister,” Mr Chidambaram said, adding that the government behaves and acts as though it is on the right path and has delivered on the issues that matter to the common people. This is false. This is also bull-headed obduracy. This also reflects the government’s contemptuous disregard of the burdens and sufferings of the people.
Mr Chidambaram said, “I was astonished that the Finance Minister was outlining a plan for the next 25 years, which she called the Amrit Kaal ! The government seems to believe that the present does not need any attention and the people living in the present can be asked to wait patiently until the Amrit Kaal dawns. This is nothing but mocking the people of India, especially the poor and the deprived.” /LAB/SNG/