Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman presented the annual budget on July 6, 2019.
While it is the first time that issues like water crisis have been addressed by the budget and a new ministry called the Jal Shakti Ministry has been allocated ₹28,261.59 crore for provision of clean and piped drinking water to every household in the country. Despite that, we cannot overlook some critical issues that the budget has missed out.
While to bridge the fiscal at home, the government emphasises on two things: the Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) and Foreign Inclusion Factor. However, very little has been done to bridge the gap between the rich and the poor at home.
With joblessness is at an all-time high, the budget allocated to the scheme that provides unemployment allowance, the MNREGS, has not been increased; instead, it has witnessed a fall. Moreover, highly talked about schemes like the Make in India initiative and Digital India weren’t even mentioned in the budget speech.
It is incomprehensible, how in the times of an acute agrarian crisis, the government has yet again neglected the farmers and the issues like debt relief and remunerative prices.
The pie of the budget, however, being the goal of making India a $5 trillion economy is nothing more than an example of lack of statistical integrity of the government. Basic arithmetic tells us that because of the virtue of compounding, Indian economy while growing at the rate of 5% inflation would anyway jump from a $3 trillion economy to a $5 trillion economy, even without the government doing anything about it!
Thus, while the government claims on having presented a budget that focuses majorly on “gaon, gareeb aur kisan”, and consequently tackling the economic slowdown, it seems like the budget lacks inclusiveness, fiscal stimulus and some structural, bold reforms to bring back the growth.