Rajya Sabha MP and former finance minister, P Chidambaram alleged on Thursday that the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government’s approach to the economy and governance is “biased in favour of the rich”. It is a government of the rich, by the rich and for the rich, he stated.
In a statement on the Interim Union Budget 2024-25 that was presented in the Parliament today by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, the veteran Congress leader said that the Modi government is “either ignorant or callous to the fact that the top 10 per cent owns 60 per cent of the nation’s wealth and earns 57 per cent of the national income and that income inequality has widened significantly in the last 10 years.”
He maintained that the income disparity was due to the low growth rate during the 10-year period. He pointed out that when NDA look over the government from UPA, the GDP growth rate was 6.4 per cent and average growth rate of 7.5 per cent. In the NDA period the average growth rate has been less than 6 per cent, he said.
Chidambaram criticized the Union Finance Minister for talking about the GDP, but not about the per capita income. “She spoke about free grain to 80 crore persons, but she did not speak about India’s rank in the Global Hunger Index or to widespread malnutrition among children leading to a high proportion of stunting and wasting,” he stated.
The Congress leader also protested that while mentioning inflation, Sitharaman did not make address that “food inflation currently is 7.7 per cent; that real wages for casual workers have stagnated for four years; and the fact that there is an increase in the proportion of workers dependent on agriculture.”
Chidambaram slammed the Finance Minister for not speaking about the rampant unemployment among India’s youth on how the government intend to address the problem. “By deliberate neglect over the last 10 years, the government has destroyed the demographic dividend story and dashed the hopes of millions of youth and their families,” he said.
He also pointed out that the Finance Minister also left out issues related to crime against women and women’s employment. The Congress leader mentioned that male casual workers earn 48 per cent more than women workers and male regular workers 24 per cent more than women.
The former finance minister also said that Sitharaman did not even acknowledge the causes for the plight of the farmers: rising input costs, insufficient and uncertain MSP, biased import and export policies, and crop insurance that is either absent or denied.
Chidambaram maintained that none of the boasts made by the NDA government on health and education can be accomplished with the low budget allocation. The allocation in the 2024-25 Budget for health is 1.8 per cent and for education 2.5 per cent of total expenditure.
He claimed that the ‘minimum’ government policy has undermined federalism, starved state governments of funds and virtually reduced the third tier of governance – panchayats and municipalities – to ciphers. “Federalism has been considerably weakened by the central government taking over – rather usurping – the executive and legislative powers of state governments,” P Chidambaram stated.
