When Mungeri Lals dreams came true

Mungeri Lal ko bahut dhoonda. Lekin woh kahin mile nahin. Agar aap unse mile to unko bata deejiyega ki unke sapne saakar ho gaye hain" (I looked everywhere for an individual called Mungeri Lal. I couldn't find him. If you see him, please let him know that his dreams have come true), Finance Minister Jaswant Singh told Lok Sabha Speaker Manohar Joshi, while delivering his Interim Budget speech yesterday.

Singh did not for once look in the direction of the leader of the Opposition, Sonia Gandhi, but clearly reminded the House of her mocking remarks that a 7 per cent rate of GDP growth was like the Walter-Mitty dreams of his Hindi counterpart, Mungeri Lal. This was one of the direct political points the Finance Minister scored in his Budget speech today.

For an election-oriented Budget, the Interim Budget was all about Rajasthan. The state "" including its capital"" Jaipur, was mentioned seven times in the Finance Minister's short speech.

Rajasthan has got an AIIMS-like hospital (the foundation stone was laid by the Finance Minister in Jodhpur last week), funding from Nabard to promote self-help groups, a Desert Area Development Programme, improvement of the Indira Gandhi Canal Project, a world-class convention centre along with the attendant facilities to make the Jaipur airport an international airport, and the promise that cities in Rajasthan would find a place in the list of towns to get better water supply.

Singh has tried to address the demands of regions and sectors without sounding populist.

A raft of schemes for farmers, the rural poor and small-scale industries has been given budgetary support. Facilitating farmers' access to ready cash has been the thrust of the Budget schemes.

These include making farm-credit cheaper, modifying the Kisan Credit Cards for ATM use, packages for farmers growing sugar and tea, the process of mortgaging farm land (the Budget makes it mandatory for banks to use as mortgage, land equivalent to the value of the loan), waiving of capital gains tax on those farmers whose land have been acquired by the government and expansion of the Antyodaya Scheme to tribal areas.

This means winning over a huge new constituency. None of these measures are new, but providing the money for these schemes is likely to win over the farmers.

The health needs of the urban poor have also been addressed with the creation of decentralised specialty healthcare facilities, especially in smaller towns. The merger of dearness allowance (DA) with the basic pay to the extent of 50 per cent from 1 April, is expected to win over the salaried classes.

The presentation of the Budget was stalled by the Opposition for nearly 90 minutes as they claimed that the government had circumvented rules and not had the President address in the first session of the year.

The government's position was that the current session was not the first of the year, only a spillover of the last. Former Prime Minister Chandrashekhar's intervention saying that the government should not mislead the House and instead should explain the circumstances in which the President's address could not be made, elicited an angry response from the treasury benches.

The Opposition charged that the passage of the vote-on-account laid itself open to legal questioning. Somnath Chatterjee (CPI M) said the Calcutta High Court had in 1966, ruled that holding the first session of the year of the Assembly without a governor's address was illegal. Parliament's vote-on-account could be subject of the same charge, he added.

The voting will take place tomorrow.