[This should have ideally been a comment on sujay_marthi’s two reviews on the Budget. But the space available does not permit me to post my views as comments, so I am posting my comments as a review.]
I do not generally listen to budget speeches or read the texts, as both are big bore, big lies, most of the issues on which the FMs usually wax eloquent in Parliament do not wash and all that they are wont to do is kick and charge as a cartoon in the Punch caricatured a PM for charging the Camel cigarette.
I do not recall the exact details; but if what I remember makes sense it is like this: X told Y, take up your shovels, pack up your camels, sit on your asses, I shall take you to the Promised Land. When Z became the PM, he took away our shovels, charged our Camels, and kicked us on our asses.
Since Sujay had threatened me in advance that he would be reviewing the budget and wanted some hints from me(better said as a stick to beat me!), I had a quick look at the Budget text, and a careful reading of his two reviews, which made more sense to me than the sterile text of the Budget. Without going into the details of the Budget, which Sujay has done exceedingly well, let me take the readers to some generalities.
Generalities
In a democracy, especially a multi-party democracy such as India, Budgets(whether of the Centre or States) by their very nature are discriminatory. For, the FM, like other Ministers represent a political party, and he has to follow, to use the present FM's party's refrain appeasement policy. The only difference is that here those who are being appeased are not any alleged or imagined community, but that national affront of a party to which he belongs, and to which 12 other parties have latched on for sheer political survival.
As the FM does not have the academic, technical(leave alone the most mundane) know-how on who is Peter and who is Paul, for the robbing, paying, and also retaining for the government's persistence, aberrations and extravaganzas(in the ultimate analysis Budget is all about this!), he relies on the Finance Department, the Planning Commission and so on, all of which have either no information or have only half-baked information about realities on the ground.
The Budget Classes
In Indian context, the three most familiar classes for Budget purposes are(a) middle class(though no one really knows who comprise this blessed middle), (b) subsidy classes(the vote-bank whom the FM cannot afford to antagonise), and(c) poor class, to whom he has nothing to offer other than more poverty and poignancy.
The Lower and Middling Middle Classes
Turning to these three classes, the middle class in India is a heterogeneous ensemble with multiple layers. Those who are affected the most by any Budget are the lower and middling middle class and not the upper middle class.
The Subsidy Classes
The subsidy classes are again heterogeneous, and a lot of groundwork is required to identify the really needy, which is never done. As a result, the real benefits of subsidy(like the benefits of employment and educational reservations) go to the already affluent.
The Poor Classes
I do not know if the industrial establishment BPL filched its name from the Government or the latter filched the acronym from the former. In any case, in the Centre's officialese BPL is Below the Poverty Line. Though the poor are supposed to be those belonging to this category, unlike the Laxman Rekha it has been drawn and redrawn by statistical jugglery to suit political and governmental expediency.
Assuming that the really poor are well within this category, and assuming that a large chunk of this category belongs to the weaker sections, how does any budget help them? It cannot be by hiking second class train fare, for there is no third class now; it cannot be by hiking income tax, for theirs is a bare-all case; it cannot be by a paltry reduction in the price of petrol or diesel for most of them are still bullock-cart and bicycle-wallahs depending on fire-wood and kerosene to light up their hell-holes, and fuel the fuel which keeps them going.
The poor have to be taken care of by long term planned programmes for poverty eradication, and by poor-oriented institutional and market mechanisms, and delivery systems in particular concerning basic amenities such as hospitals, drinking water, sanitation, basic education and consumption needs such as of schools, food grains, cooking oil, and fuel. But these mechanisms have been disgustingly inefficient, callously indifferent to the poor, and corrupt to the core. Since many of the items, which the poor need come under the State budgets, even if they are aware of the Central budget they remain wiser by their stoic
indifference to it.
The Finale: Asses or Horses?
Sujay said the FM has again resorted to flogging the half-dead horses or asses(read the middle class). For giving a twist to what he said, I quote from Will Durant's Story of Philosophy:
In 1715, proud of his twenty-one years, he [Voltaire] went to Paris, just in time to be in at the death of Louis XIV. The succeeding Louis being too young to govern France, much less Paris, the power fell into the hands of a regent; and during this quasi-interregnum life ran riot in the capital of the world, and young Arouet [Voltaire] ran with it. He soon achieved a reputation as a brilliant and reckless lad. When the Regent, for economy, sold half the horses that filled the royal stables, Francois [Voltaire] remarked how much more sensible it would have been to dismiss half the asses that filled the royal court.
