The Punjab Budget has aside just 1,500 crores for farm waiver meant to benefit 10 lakh marginal farmers.
After Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra, the Amarinder Singh-led Punjab government too has announced a loan waiver for its farmers. Announced just a night before the Budget was tabled, Chief Minister Amarinder Singh's loan waiver package was meant to be the most generous waiver announced so far. But the Congress government's maiden budget hasn't kept pace with the Chief Minister's announcements.
In the state's budget tabled in the state assembly on Tuesday, however, Punjab Finance Minister Manpreet Badal set aside just 1,500 crores for the big waiver meant to benefit 10 lakh marginal farmers; an average of 15,000 for each farmer.
Mr Badal also vowed to push farmers in India's food bowl towards cash crops rather than cereals and announced setting up a horticulture university to drive this diversification.
A furious opposition took the government to task. Former Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Singh Badal called the finance minister names for misleading people.
Aam Aadmi Party's HS Phoolka, called the budget "a big joke", complaining that it did not reflect the announcement made by the Chief Minister and earmarked a measly 1500 crores for the waiver. "This is absolutely shocking and so unfortunate", the leader of the opposition in the assembly said.
The allocation has the Finance Minister Manpreet Badal on a defensive. Mr Badal told NDTV that this was a token allocation and more money would be made available once the details of the loan waiver were worked out. Chief Minister Amarinder Singh had estimated the loan waiver package would cost 25,000 crores.
It won't be easy. The Congress government has blamed the previous Akali Dal-led alliance of bleeding the coffers dry. By March this year, the state's consolidated debt touched 1.82 lakh crore. Mr Badal's budget will push it further to 1.95 lakh crore without accounting for the promised mega loan waiver.
A white paper on the government's financial health has already predicted that the "state finances are in a free fall".
In a state where recent studies suggest every third farmer was below the poverty line, Finance Minister Badal said the government had to try to "pull farmers out of debt". But this is only a short-term measure.
But for the long term, Mr Badal, who announced a 66 per cent spike in allocation for the farm sector, also had a message for the rest of the country.
He said Punjab shouldn't be expected to be grow grains for the rest of the country. In the last 60 years, the minister said Punjab had modelled its economy into growing cereal crops. "Punjab has to be relieved of its duty of growing cereal crops and the green resolution must move eastwards," the minister said, pledging to push diversification of its farm sector from cereal crops to horticulture, fruits and livestock farming.