Mumbai: On the whole, the State budget is just a jugglery of numbers. It has failed to come to come up with worthy new initiatives. It doesn’t help 90% of the people who are affected by issues like the agrarian crisis, farmer suicides, malnutrition, unemployment and infant mortality. In this ₹2.5 lakh crore budget, more than 80% is taken up by salaries, pensions and subsidies.
Maharashtra has the largest State income, accounting for 15-17% of the country’s income. The government should have the political will to garner more resources. No initiative has been taken to curb speculative land transactions, not to collect more taxes.
Maharashtra is at third place among all States in human development, but there’s no progress in the educational sector that takes up one of every five rupees. The situation is dismal: at the national level, the State’s institutes rank poorly on all standard parameters. This is allowing private institutions to flourish, because politicians are managing many of these. When it comes to education, the bottom half is bypassed. This is merely an accountance budget and does not give any new direction.
For the farmers, on one hand, there’s demonetisation and on the other, there’s no procurement of pulses and other crops. Maharashtra’s employment guarantee scheme is a pioneering initiative because its the first large-scale rural employment scheme in the world. The government is collecting ₹1,700 to ₹1,800 crore a year in ‘professional taxes’, which is supposed to help the scheme, but it isn’t. The employee guarantee scheme has been discontinued by this government.
There’s total embezzlement in the Jalyukt Shivar scheme, and environmental disruption is taking place. The cotton monopoly scheme, which is no longer available, helped people in Marathwada and Vidharba. But each day, two to three farmers are committing suicide. To sum it up in one line, there’s rural stagnation and urban chaos.
Prof. HM Desarda is an agricultural economist and former member, Maharashtra State Planning Commission
