Affiliates of RSS, BJP gear up for LS polls with interim Budget plans

In the run-up to the Interim Budget for 2024-25, affiliates of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) are advocating for a range of measures. These include a five-day banking week, doubling the Kisan Samman Nidhi for women farmers to Rs 12,000 annually, incorporating special allowance in pension calculations for banking sector workers, and expanding the Ujjwala Yojana’s consumer base.

These affiliates – including the likes of the Bharatiya Kisan Sangh (farmers' arm of the RSS), the Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh (trade union body of the RSS), and the BJP’s Mahila Morcha (women's wing) -- have all submitted their suggestions to Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman.

The interlocutors are conscious that the exercise on February 1 will only be an Interim Budget, and a full Budget will be presented sometime in July. “But extrapolating the 2019 Interim and final Budget, we find that there was hardly any change in the two versions. Therefore, we believe the Interim Budget is as important as the version we will see in July – and the changes will be minor,” said Sandeep Vempati, an economist with the BJP and financial markets expert.

This year, the Budget proposals carry added significance due to the impending general elections. And, all the front organisations are preparing for this challenge. Besides making budget demands, the BJP’s Kisan Morcha, for instance, has been instructed to reach out to 100,000 villages in India and hold at least two farmer conventions nationwide, in a bid to address a constituency of voters that has been restive and had earlier compelled the government to take back laws intended to modernise agricultural commodity procurement and price discovery.

The outreach, set to begin immediately after the Interim Budget, will emphasise the government's initiatives for farmers, such as the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi, crop insurance scheme, irrigation schemes, and more. It will also highlight budgetary allocations for farmers, according to top BJP sources. Bandi Sanjay, the party’s Telangana leader, has been appointed to oversee this outreach.

Similarly, after organising a massive demonstration in November in Delhi to persuade the government to revert to the Old Pension Scheme (OPS), the BMS submitted a list of demands to the finance minister on January 20, seeking specific intervention for banking sector workers.

Its demands include an upward revision of pension for retired bank employees in line with the recommendations of the Supreme Court, health cover for these pensioners, and a review of the special allowance, which is currently not part of pension calculation. BMS General Secretary Girish Chandra Arya said: “There are a dozen writ petitions across India which are now being heard together by the Delhi High Court. If the High Court repeals this provision, banks will have to pay thousands of crores as arrears from 2012.”

The BJP's Mahila Morcha hopes to see a boost for women's self-help groups in the Budget. The Mahila Morcha chief and Coimbatore MLA, Vanathi Srinivasan, has already been tasked with reaching out to over 10 million SHGs across the country.

According to Vempati, the macro numbers for the upcoming Interim Budget are promising, and will enable a mission-making push to sectors that are already showing promise. “The Periodic Labour Force Survey 2022-23 tells us that there had been a dramatic increase in women’s participation in the labour force in rural areas between 2017-18 and 2022-23, from 24.6 per cent to 46 per cent. So the budget needs to leverage this positive development,” he said.

“With an estimated 10 per cent nominal GDP growth for FY25 (10.5 per cent factored in for 2023-24), the nominal GDP for FY25 could be Rs 326.24 trillion. Cumulative receipts until November 2022 were 59 per cent of total receipts for FY23. Assuming tax buoyancy of 1 per cent and since tax revenues comprise 86 per cent of total receipts in FY23, the forecasted total receipts would be Rs 32.54 trillion for FY25,” he further said.

The Union government is expected to achieve a 5.9 per cent fiscal deficit in FY24; it is targeting a 4.5 per cent fiscal deficit by FY26. As per the First Advance Estimate, nominal GDP growth for FY25 is estimated to be lower than predicted in the Union Budget 2023-24. So, a 5.4 per cent fiscal deficit can be aimed for FY25 in this course -- which translates to Rs 17.61 trillion,” Vempati explained.

He said that capital expenditure can grow “by 15 per cent to Rs 11.5 trillion over the FY24 Budget allocation of Rs 10 trillion (higher than estimated 10 per cent nominal GDP growth for FY25)”. This shall have a cascading effect on jobs and livelihood creation. While clarifying that this was his opinion as an economist with the BJP and not the position of the party, he noted all indications are that encouragement to women’s participation in the labour force, which is currently below the global average, should be an aim of Viksit Bharat.

Vempati would like to see a revival of initiatives of the government that provide information on its initiatives like the National Financial Information Registry, “which has not seen much development and can provide better advice on access to credit to MSMEs”.