Following the announcement of the Union Budget 2024-25 bt the Finance Minister, Nirmala Sitharaman, the India National Congress held a press conference to address their concerns and share their responses observations on the Union budget.

“I am happy that the  Finance Minister had an opportunity to read the Congress’ Manifesto after the LS 2024 elections. She has virtually adopted the ideas underlying our proposals on Employment-linked Incentive (ELI) scheme, the Apprenticeship Scheme with an allowance to the Apprentice, and on the abolition of the Angel Tax. I wish she had adopted many more ideas from the Congress’ Manifesto,” claimed P. Chidambaram, Former Finance Minister during the press conference, uploaded on the Congress social media X account.

On the issue of Unemployment which is the biggest challenge facing the country, Chidambaram stated, “The response of the government is too little and will have only little impact on the grave unemployment situation. The claim that the schemes announced by the FM will benefit 290 lakh persons is highly exaggerated.”      According to CMIE, the all India unemployment rate is 9.2 per cent.

Inflation being anothermajor challenge, Chidambaram cited that the WPI inflation is 3.4 per cent, CPI inflation is 5.1 per cent, and food inflation is 9.4 per cent.  He also cited the Economic Survey (ES) claim on the deflator for manufacturing has been assumed as 1.7 per cent.  The deflator(s) assumed by the government have been severely criticized by several knowledgeable economists.

“Unless the puzzle of the ‘deflator’ is resolved, it is not possible to unquestionably accept the claimed GDP growth rate of 8.2 per cent in 2023-24. Besides, the GDP growth rate is no answer to the huge challenge of inflation. The FM dismissed it in ten words in para 3 of her speech. We deplore the casual attitude of the government. And nothing in the Budget Speech gives us the confidence that the government will seriously tackle the issue of inflation,” asserted the Congress.

Regarding education, especially school education, the Congress urged that the central government must drive — and help — the states address these fundamental problems.

The Congress also raised concerns on NEET and the scandal-ridden National Testing Agency.  “Several states have demanded that NEET should be scrapped and the states should be free to adopt their own methods of selecting candidates to various courses in medical education. No response. I did not hear the finance minister refer to school education. Yet, the government is stubbornly clinging to NEET which, you will recall, is an examination at the end of school education.  Interestingly, against BE of Rs 1,16,417 crore on Education, the government spent only Rs 1,08,878,” stated Chidambaram.

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While considering that Healthcare is better but not sufficient, Chidambaram stated that the Public healthcare is growing quantitatively but not in quality.

“Out of pocket expenditure is still about 47 per cent of total health expenditure. There is a grave shortage of doctors, nurses, medical technicians, and diagnostic equipment and machines. The central government’s expenditure on healthcare has declined to 0.28 per cent as a proportion of GDP and to 1.9 per cent as a proportion of total expenditure. No response. I did not hear the finance minister speak about the grave deficiencies in public healthcare. Moreover, against a BE of Rs 88,956 crore, the government spent only Rs 79,221 crore,” claimed Chidambaram.

Supriya Srinate, Member Congress Working Committee who shared Congress’ expectations from the budget and response highlighted the worsening condition of public health care, decrease in people’s income, farmers issue, education loans.

“It was believed that the government would spend more on health this time, but instead of spending more, it is being reduced. Last time the budget was 88,956 crores, but the expenditure has been reduced to less than 80,000 crores. More than 8 thousand crores have been cut in this,” argued Srinate.

On the Income of the people, Srinate reminded the Congress demand on minimum wage raised to Rs. 400 per day. “But the truth is that no relief has been given to daily wage labourers,” expressed Srinate.

“Farmers are demanding a legal guarantee of MSP, but the government has not said a word in its budget. Along with this, the agriculture budget has been reduced,” added Srinate.

She also highlighted Congress’ demand on the need to waive off the outstanding education loan. “In this budget, there was a talk of giving education loan, but there was no talk of waiving off the education loan for those who are struggling with it,” rued Srinate.

Srinate also drew attention to the demand of scrapping the Agneepath scheme, however claimed that but not a single word was spoken on the Agneepath scheme during the Union budget announcement.