Congress leader Shashi Tharoor on Monday said the Union Budget-2022 was a let-down when it came to people’s expectations, in the context of the huge distress caused by the COVID pandemic.
Congress MPs later staged a walkout from Lok Sabha, protesting Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s absence during the speech made by Mr. Tharoor, who opened the debate on the Budget.
Mr. Tharoor said while India had gradually moved beyond the horrors of the destructive second wave of the pandemic and was coping reasonably well with the present crisis of Omicron, there was no doubt that the past year had placed the citizens in an unimaginable distress. In that context, he said, the presentation of the Annual Budget could not have been seen as a routine economic exercise.
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“The Budget serves as a platform through which the people of this nation are informed of the political priorities of their government,” said Mr. Tharoor.
The Congress leader said the government should have acknowledged the issues of unprecedented levels of unemployment and admitted that the income of one-fifth of India’s population had plunged a staggering 53% in the last five years. While the wealth of 100 richest persons hit a record high of about ₹57 lakh crore, about 4.7 crore people slipped below the poverty line. The middle class was left defenceless in the face of rising inflation, shrinking incomes and the consequent accelerated household debt and there was widespread distress and anguish in the agrarian economy.
Stating that these were avoidable situations, Mr. Tharoor said the government failed to usher in concrete actions and corrective measures to address the multi-pronged calamities that the government itself had caused; it failed to address the increasing unemployment crisis and declining labour force participation. It should have developed targeted measures for job creation and strengthened employment guarantee schemes like MGNREGA, instead of slashing the allocations.
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The government should have provided urgent life support to the MSME sector, which was battered first by demonetisation and thenthe COVID-19 lockdown; mitigated the crisis of the middle class by reducing income tax or at least raising the exemption slab to at least ₹5 lakh. While there was a need to manage the price of commodities, the cracks in Minimum Support Price for farmers should have been fixed, the Thiruvananthapuram MP said.
On the employment front, Mr. Tharoor said the projected 60 lakh jobs over a period five years was inadequate, a far cry from the two crore jobs a year they was promised earlier.
Stating that the government had not learnt from the repeated instances of incursions, the Congress leader said adequate defence budget allocations should have been made. He also raised the issue of strengthening the medical infrastructure.
Later BJP Member Nishikant Dubey targeted the Congress for staging a walk-out. He said the Budget had come at a time when the whole world was facing the COVID crisis. It needed to be appreciated that despite the pandemic, the country had managed about 9% GDP growth. He said MGNREGA was a demand driven scheme and the required funds were being allocated.
He highlighted the government’s initiative in the area of river interlinking, stating that it would benefit farmers in different parts of the country.