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With job creation in view, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s Budget for 2025-26, presented on Saturday, has focused on micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs).
After the recent Lok Sabha elections and Assembly polls, in which the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) announced and delivered on several welfare measures for the poor, the minister in her Budget proposals pleased the country’s middle class with tax exemptions and also reached out to the electorate of Bihar, announcing support for projects in the state.
The government’s outreach to the middle class has come in the context of the Delhi Assembly polls, voting for which is scheduled for Wednesday, and such recent announcements as the setting up of the Eighth Pay Commission.
The middle class comprises a significant section of the 15.5 million electorate of Delhi, where the BJP last secured a majority in the 70-member legislature in 1993.
The middle class is also sizeable in several of the towns and cities across the country scheduled for civic polls, including polls to the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation, the wealthiest civic body in the country.
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The FM mentioned “middle class” nine times in her speech, compared to only three in her Budget 2024-25 in July last year.
If that Budget came in the context of the BJP falling short of a single-party majority in the Lok Sabha elections, this has come after the victories in Haryana and Maharashtra by the National Democratic Alliance, of which the BJP is part.
The several projects for Bihar (see box) announced add to the Rs 59,000 crore that the FM allocated to the state for road connectivity, power, and flood management in her Budget for 2024-25. Bihar has found half a dozen mentions in her Budget, and the only other state that finds a reference is Assam, where Assembly polls are scheduled for April-May next year. The Budget has announced opening a urea plant with an annual capacity of 1.27 million tonnes, to be set up in Namrup in the Northeastern state.
If the government has turned to MSMEs for job growth, this has also come across as its keenness to stop migration from rural to urban areas. The Budget announced a comprehensive multi-sectoral “Rural Prosperity and Resilience” programme in partnership with states with the “goal to generate ample opportunities in rural areas so that migration is an option, but not a necessity”.
However, if the budgetary proposals are any indication, the decadal Census is unlikely to be carried out this year. The Budget has allocated just Rs 574.80 crore for the exercise. A meeting of the Union Cabinet on December 24, 2019, had approved the proposal for the census of India 2021 at Rs 8,754.23 crore and updating the National Population Register (NPR) at Rs 3,941.35 crore. However, the house listing phase of the Census and the exercise to update the NPR, scheduled for the period April 1 to September 30, 2020, were postponed due to Covid-19.
However, the Budget proposals would have the finance minister answer with more surefootedness some of the queries posed by her party colleagues, which she is slated to take up during the Lok Sabha’s Question Hour on Monday.
The BJP’s Bihar MP Janardhan Singh Sigriwal has sought to know the details of the financial assistance provided by the Centre to Bihar, while BJP MPs from Odisha, Bhartruhari Mahtab and Balabhadra Majhi, have asked her for details on whether there has been an increase in tax collection and foreign investment after reduction in corporate tax rates.
