Interim Budget-2019
Deceitful and Unrealistic Election Exercise
The Finance Minister presented
a full-fledged budget and called it
as interim budget. It has two
features: one, the over estimation
of GDP and second, the announce-
ment of the population-scale
entitlement programmes. The vote-
oriented announcements in this
pre-election budget cost about
Rs.1 trillion; yet the fiscal deficit
remains unchanged.
The
Finance
Minister
announced a new programme with
huge annual expenditure outlay of
Rs.75,000 crore, Pradhan Mantri
Kisan Samman Nidhi, which will
offer an annual income support of
Rs.6000 per year to all farmer
families that have cultivable land up
to 2 hectares.
According to agricultural
census 2015-16, of the 146 million
operational holding in the country,
86 per cent have an area below 2
hectares. This gives the figure of
125 million land holders.
Remember almost half of these
families reside in UP, Bihar, MP,
West Bengal and Rajasthan.
The crisis in agricultural sector
and consequent pauperisation of
peasantry is due to growing
landlessness, extraction of surplus
profits with high prices for inputs
by MNCs and depressed prices for
agricultural produce paid by the
cartels of business houses and
lack of institutional credit. The BJP
government has addressed none
of them during its tenure.
According to estimation of
Commission for Agricultural Costs
and Prices, the costs of cultivation,
excluding rent and rental costs of
machinery, amounts to about
Rs.70,000 per hectare if rice and
wheat are cultivated. For two
hectares the cost would be
20
Rs.1,40,000. How much relief will
the farmers engaged in double
cropping then get? Instead of
solving the basic problems of
peasants, a sop of Rs.6000 per
year is more like giving alms to the
beggars.
Besides, it is not going to reach
the actual tillers of land. As the
agricultural census shows that the
landlessness is growing and the
average size of land holdings
below 2 hectares is also falling for
the peasantry. In the absence of
employment in the non-farm sector,
the small and landless peasants
are leasing-in land to eke out a
living. 55 per cent of all peasants
are landless and work as share
croppers or wage labourers.
According to some estimates,
tenancy farming crossed 50 per
cent of cultivable land at all India
level. Thus unregistered tenancy
farming has grown in the recent
past. Instead of helping this section
of peasantry, the BJP mooted the
proposal to abolish the tenancy
protection laws in order to facilitate
corporate farming. The present
scheme excludes this section of the
peasantry.
Beyond the debate on the
inadequacy of payments under this
scheme, there are long-term
economic and political implications.
Whichever party may come to
power after the election, it will not
retract from this scheme, not only
because of its populist appeal, but
also as part of a policy frame work.
The Universal Basic Income (UBI)
is under discussion. Yet it is being
implemented in a devious way like
direct benefit transfers into bank
accounts as in the case of LPG
supply and loan waivers for
farmers. The Rs. 6000 income
support is part of implementing the
UBI, which would do away with all
the subsidies and governmental
support to the agriculture. This
amounts to alienating the peasants
from their lands using economic
levers.
The interim budget announced
the Pradhan Mantri Shram Yogi
Mandhan scheme and allocated a
token Rs.500 crore for workers in
the unorganized sector. This
pension scheme will only cover
those workers who gets monthly
wages of less than Rs.15,000 and
would cover about a fourth of the
total workers in the unorganized
sector.
According to the Finance
Minister “a worker joining pension
scheme at the age of 29 years will
have to contribute Rs.100 per
month till the age of 60 to which
the government adds equal
amounts. The worker gets Rs.3000
per month as pension from the age
of 60 years.”
There are schemes announ-
ced for the benefit of workers of
unorganized sector in the past like
insurance for construction workers
etc. Their implementation is at its
best is limited to issue of cards and
majority of workers are not aware
of this scheme. Crores of rupees
collected as premium from the
workers lies idle, while the workers
continue to die every day in work
place accidents.
One cannot close their eyes to
the fact that, where there is no
certainty of continuity of jobs, a
permanent feature of employment
in unorganized sector, there is no
guarantee the workers and
employees will be able to pay the
amounts they have to deposit
every month in order to get pension
benefits after 30 or 40 years.
Class Struggle