The Samajwadi Janata Party (SJP) yesterday came down heavily on the Union budget by saying that the exercise was intended solely for 1.3 per cent of the people of the country, and it was the same section of people which was roundly applauding the initiatives of Union finance minister P Chidamabaram.
SJP general secretary Kamal Morarka recalled that several leading lights of the United Front government were one with the SJP in criticising Manmohan Singh when he speeded up the liberalisation process in 1991.
Even though Chidambaram had gone faster and had taken steps that Manmohan Singh had hesitated to take, members of the government were now hailing the budget just because they were in office, he said.
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Morarka, an industrialist who was the minister of state in the PMO, regretted that virtually no party was talking on behalf of the poor even though the budget had allegedly completely bypassed the poor of the country.
While chambers of commerce are meant to articulate the interests of the industry and the rich, it is the person in public life who is supposed to articulate the aspirations of the poor. It is strange that people who have been elected on the votes of the poor are echoing the sentiments of the chambers of commerce. If all political parties subscribe to this, who will speak up for the poor and the deprived, he told newsmen here.
Citing a table from the Economic Survey presented in Parliament before the budget, he said subsidies had declined considerably since the seventh plan. The major subsidies amounted to 1.7 per cent of the GDP during the seventh plan period, but had decreased to 1.2 by the eighth plan. Similarly, the budget support for plan had decreased from 7.1 to 4.9 during the same five-year periods.
Morarka said all that Madhu Dandavate, planning commission deputy chairman, had laid out in the approach paper to the ninth five-year plan had been brought to a naught by Chidambarams budget. Prime Minister H D Deve Gowda, he said, had always abided by an agriculture oriented philosophy, but there was no reflection of that in the budget.
The corporate sector is naturally happy, but they dont have to go to the people for votes. If the problem as the finance minister sees it, is merely confined to capital markets, less profitability of the MNCs, then the budget should be hailed. But a country like India cannot be run like a business .
house, he remarked.
According to him, this was the first budget since independence which is targetted to a small section of the population. The euphoria over the budget, he said, was due to the reliefs granted to tax-payers, who form a mere 1.3 per cent of the population, but are the most vocal. He faulted the budget on various grounds, and alleged that the underlying social philosophy was questionable while the economic strategy was incapable of delivering results.