The acting Finance Minister started his Interim Budget speech with the observation that extraordinary times require extraordinary actions. We are in extraordinary times as our otherwise resilient economy gets buffeted around by the global financial storm. For no fault of ours, the Indian economy is slowing down and many feel that the worst is yet to come. For long, we have been telling those who have so far been left out of the process of unprecedented growth that they will soon be included.
And, suddenly, the slowdown means that they have to wait longer than they were supposed to. Add to the fact that current job losses add more to the excluded group.
The speech talked about the initiatives taken by the UPA government in the last four years, and its social sector initiatives, especially on health and social security, are indeed laudable. However, we needed to know what the government will do now. We needed to know whether the government has done enough during last December and January and everything will be hunky-dory from now on. We needed to be told how important is Parliamentary propriety when the economy is slowing down; propriety in a Parliament that shows wads of notes as evidence of corruption in buying votes. I am afraid that I wanted a more frank and fair discussion of the road ahead; not what has been done in the past. After all, the Budget is for 2009-10, the year that is yet to come.
Shubhashis Gangopadhyay, Research Director, India Development Foundation
