(Ashutosh joined the Aam Aadmi Party in January. The former journalist took on former Union minister Kapil Sibal and Health Minister Hasrh Vardhan in the national election from Chandni Chowk in Delhi.)Never in the history of the Indian Parliament has a finance minister requested a break of five minutes during the presentation of annual budget. As Arun Jaitley looked at Madam Speaker Sumitra Mahajan, and asked for permission, we all were zapped.
Within minutes we were informed that he probably had a health issue
and once he was back in the house, he presented the budget sitting down against the norm of doing so standing. It was visible from his face he was having a tough time standing and was in pain, still he went ahead and completed his speech in more than two hours.
My aim is not to make fun of his health nor to derive any sadistic pleasure. I always had tremendous respect for him and still hold him in high esteem. He is one of the country's finest legal brains and very erudite and articulate but today his health was symptomatic of the problem from which the Modi government is suffering.
Mr Jaitley was having a tough time not only from handling his own physical health but also from the huge expectation that the Modi government had generated during the election campaign when he presented himself as the single window solution for all the ills and bad health of the country and economy.
Everybody thought Mr Jaitley would present a miracle budget which would propel India into a an unheard-of growth trajectory and the economy would suddenly start running instead of crawling.
The mandate of 2014 was a mandate for change. People were fed up with the way the UPA 2 led them into policy chaos and administrative paralysis. There was no leadership. There was confusion all around. Manmohan Singh was convinced about the 'Right' path, Rahul and others had other ideas; for them socialism was the 'new left', Nehru was to be 're-discovered'. It was bad timing, and it gave Modi an opportunity to resurrect Sardar Patel.
Corruption was most shamelessly exhibited by by the UPA government. The final result was the total rejection of the Manmohan Singh government and the Congress had to face the worst humiliation in its history. They appear to have even lost the right to claim the status of the leader of the opposition.
People voted for Modi and the BJP for change- change from price rise, change from corruption, change from a sluggish economy, change from leaderlessness, change from policy paralysis and chaos. People were looking at the Budget as the first announcement of that CHANGE.
People had had the same hope from the rail budget as well but that had been hugely disappointing. It was this reason that the Sensex that day had dipped by more than 400 points. During Jaitley's budget too the Sensex was not very appreciative and for first three quarters of the speech, it was hovering more than 200 points in the red. Though, it improved later and moved up.
As the government's first serious policy pronouncement, Modi 's budget failed to enthuse. It had not shown any new direction. It was not for change at all. At best it can be considered a budget in continuity, as an extension of the Manmohan Singh regime, a copy of the Chidamabaram approach.
Modi had projected himself as a bold leader, a leader who did not shy away from taking tough decisions but this budget had everything except boldness and absolutely no desire to break from the past. May be that was the reason for Jailtley's problem, he was to find a middle path between the huge expectations of the middle class and the electoral politics that must be considered for Haryana and Maharashtra which vote soon.
He failed to do justice to either. He has tried to lure the middle class by raising the tax exemption limit from 2 to 2.50 lakh. But to generate a new energy or "animal spirit", if I borrow a phrase from Manmohan Singh, he needed a tax reform which was absent from his announcements.
The country needs a major labour reform to kick start the economy but this budget says nothing about this. India still lives in villages, but in the last 23 years there is hardly any focus to revolutionise our rural sector or even creatively link the village economy with urban centres. Modi 's budget talks about 100 smart cities but does not talk about making our villages the new centers of wealth creation. Mr. Jailtley has just offered some tokenism in the name of villages and farmers. That is not enough, not expected from a 'bold' leader in a country whose village economy is still dependent on the Monsoon and at a time when the dark clouds of drought are hovering over the country.
The amount that Modi and the BJP care about the rural sector and the rural poor is evident from the letter written by the Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje Scindia requesting the central government to scrap MNREGA scheme, which guarantees a minimum of 100 days of work for the rural poor. This was the flagship programme of the UPA government. Mr. Jailtley has made a minor reference to MNREGA in his budget speech but he did not bother to remove apprehensions from the minds of the people about the future of the scheme. Rather, there is a murmur that MNREGA will be linked with agricultural activity; if this were to happen, it will be a disaster for rural employment and for the poor.
The UPA government was severely criticised by the BJP when it was in the opposition for living on a subsidy economy. The Modi government has increased fertilizer and food subsidy. Diesel is still heavily subsidised, so where is the boldness? Unfortunately Modi's budget doesn't even talk about fighting corruption which was one of his majot election planks- bahut hua bhrashtachaar, abki baar Modi sarkaar. In my view the problems of price rise cannot be tackled without resorting to institutional mechanisms to fight corruption.
I can go on and on but in the end I can only say that this has been a budget which suffers from a Manmohan complex- trying to unsuccessfully balance politics and economy, and end up losing both. This was a historic opportunity to give a decisive policy direction but the Modi government failed miserably.
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