Nature Remembers You...

Nature Remembers You...
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Sunday, March 1, 2015

Government of India: Post Budget Agenda

Riding on the media bandwagon the Union Finance minister presented budget on 28th Feb 2015 admist lot of hope as change maker. While increasing the scope for the insurance cover to the poor, there is chance to include poor in monitized economy. Whether the claim is granted and reclaimed by the poor as regards to insurance? Only time would tell the benefits it would do to the poor. Thats apart the budget curtail the spending on the social sector, including Panchayati raj, education, health, water resources has been reduced. As mentioned by one analyst as under;

"Many of the social sectors have experienced huge cut in allocation. The allocation for women and child development has been reduced by staggering 44 per cent, the reduction for school education and literacy has been facing a reduction of closer to 10 per cent. The allocation for environment and forest has been slashed by almost 5 per cent and for water resources the allocation was reduced by 29 per cent. Allocation on Mid-day meal scheme has been reduced by almost 22 per cent. Allocation for JnNURM has been reduced from Rs. 6, 2167 crore to Rs. 240 crore and the money would be transferred to the creation of 100 smart cities across the country. In the name of giving fiscal autonomy to the states, 12 schemes earlier funded by central government have been winded up and left to the states to use their additional resources. As a result, backward region grants fund, tourist infrastructure development scheme, model school at block level, part of agricultural development has to be taken care of by the state governments."

For detail :https://expldev.wordpress.com/2015/03/01/union-budget-2015-16-hopes-and-apprehensions-anjan-chakrabarti/

What can be expected from the government who has done wonders to facilitate the corporate by providing for the tax breaks, have been planning to disinvest from the public enterprise, facilitate new business  etc has been lack lustors in promoting the agricultural growth. With lots of hope on the 'niti ' ayog, this has been non starter with Rs.20000 crore seed capital alloted. The state are now left with the recommendations of the finance commissions for their share of central revenue. Most of the state are now made to look for their own resources. Right approach but state needs to be trained, monitored and supported for the planning excercise. The largest share of revenue from the centre now goes to the defence sector with over Rs.2.5 lakh crore expenditure allocation. 

With the objective of bringing the labour from the agriculture to the services sector the focus retains on the skill development. What skills? mainly to serve the service sector, which has seen the rise of service tax from 12 to 14 percent directly, and with addition proposed cess of 2 percent its going to rise above 16 percent. This can harmful for the growth of service sector it self. More or less it would effect the tourism, hotel and restaurant business in big way. The middle class households are largely effected, not only in urban India but also in rural. The development scenario would never receive investments as expected due to poor rise in income of households. There is poor chance of saving the money, thus where is scope for the investment in infrastructure or govt schemes. 

The arm twisting of the middle class has been opposite to the 'achhe din' slogan by the Modi Sarkar, promised on the eve of election. The net benefit to the poor would be lesser if the investment in rural infrastructure is declining, and the employment scope is declined due to poor service sector growth. The decline in crude prices have not helped the customers but it has helped the government and corporate to save the addition revenue and foreign exchange. The additional levies and taxes would burden on the common men and rich alike since many of them who consume these raw material would be hard hit by increasing price rise. 

The global competitiveness would decline since the delay in the major projects like Dholera SIR, GIFT city and DFC would take toll on the corporate expectation. Even with rise in government investment the projects on the ground are moving at slow pace. The first of the projects mentioned might be expected to finish by 2017-18, if the projects do not get the investors who are really interested in starting projects there is likely chance to even foresee employment generated on the ground. 

Though the governments abstain itself from being populist it attracted the attention of the market and corporate since it facilitated them for the want of investment and employment. As per the experience of Gujarat goes hardly 30 to 40 percent being realized even after facilitating the corporate in most of the manufacturing sectors. 



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