Pro-poor focus in railway budget, too, as country heads for elections.
Employment generation in the midst of a global meltdown will be the central idea of the Interim Budget that the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) will present on February 16 just ahead of the general elections.
Among other proposals to give the job market a leg-up, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee’s Interim Budget speech is likely to see larger fund allocations to skill development programmes in the rural sector and subsidies for training schemes for one member of rural Below Poverty Line (BPL) families (in which adult members of the family earn less than Rs 10 a day). Under this scheme, the government will provide a subsidy to companies for training on condition that the member of the BPL family is given a job once he completes the programme.
A pilot skill development project is already in place in some states. To roll it out fully, as the government intends, the cost of the project over the next eight years would be Rs 2,26,400 crore or an average of Rs 28,300 crore a year. The budgetary allocation for the pilot project was Rs 5,650 crore.
Top government sources have made it clear that the Interim Budget will not be a routine statement of accounts for immediate government expenses. Instead, the Union government will use it as an opportunity to announce a slew of “pro-people policy measures” just ahead of general elections.
Union Home Minister P Chidambaram said there was no “constitutional bar” to announcing policy measures in an Interim Budget but added that he couldn’t say what the government was planning.
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Top sources indicated that the social sector is also likely to get high priority with large fund allocations likely for agriculture, health, human resource development and rural development. UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi is keen to make the achievements in the social sector a key plank in the upcoming polls.
Railway Minister Lalu Prasad, too, is expected to announce some more “pro-poor” policies when he presents his budget on February 13. He is also likely to announce new train services in different parts of the country.
Officials suggest that the general practice is to present the full budget within 75 days of the Interim Budget. But the UPA will use Article 85 (1) of the constitution that says the next Parliament session has to be called within 180 days (six months) of the termination of the previous session to announce these policies ahead of the elections.
The Congress-led UPA also feels that the Election Commission is likely to announce the election schedule soon after the session ends (February 26) which will leave little time for the government to announce concessions for voters since the pre-election model code of conduct will kick in. So, the ruling coalition is eying this Interim Budget as its last major opportunity to woo the electorate.
UPA managers point out that ahead of the 2004 general elections, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) had also presented an Interim Budget full of pro-people sops. Then Railway Minister Nitish Kumar had even announced new trains in his Interim Railway Budget.
Later, UPA Finance Minister P Chidambaram and Railway Minister Lalu Prasad had presented their own budgets with more concessions to voters. The Congress leadership wishes to follow the same political practice.