A reading of the budget and the Economic Survey is a crucial exercise to understand the direction that the economy is taking. It gives a sense of how responsive is a government to the actual challenges in the economy and the real needs of the people. The current budget as such was crucial as it comes on the heels of a rather turbulent global financial landscape and also disturbing domestic conditions. While protectionism is back with a vengeance in the world stage, we find internally our growth in key sectors slowing down significantly as both demand and manufacturing has plummeted. Inflation far outpaces wages, so much so that even the Economic Survey had to point towards the astronomical corporate profits that they are not willing to share with the people.
Though the government would not like to admit, but in a sense this was a budget and a survey that vindicates many of the concerns raised by the critiques of the government. One, that we need to rectify the demand side issues and two that the repeated appeasement of the corporates with tax breaks and āincentivesā would not boost growth. But sadly, if we read through the budget analysis closely, we would feel that the above prognosis is still not matched by the prescriptions. Instead of giving relief to the poor, we are only betting on the tax paying middle classes who are just 2% of the country; instead of raising corporate taxes, we still are relying heavily on indirect taxes that weigh on the poor; and instead of making substantial increases in our social sector spending we are still going with none or negligible allotments. Like the successive budgets of this government, this one too in its class bias tilts towards those at the top. In the face of the storm that the Economic Survey seems to sense, the budget remains that of an ostrich.
This year we started the budget exercise with a pre-budget analysis of what the budget should look like from a peopleās perspective given the macro-economic outlook. This was in the form of a video series we curated in collaboration with The Wire titled āThe Budget India Needs: What is at stakeā. Herein we engaged with prominent rights activists, economists, experts and social practitioners who shared their insights. This included the likes of Prabhat Patnaik, Arun Kumar, Indranil, Thomas Franco, Anuradha Talwar, Jayati Ghosh, Beena Pallical, Soumya Dutta, Vijoo Krishnan, Dinesh Abrol, Dipa Sinha, Nikhil Dey, Ritu Dewan and Tikender Panwar.
Based on observations, critical inputs and demands put forth in this series titled, we also prepared a highlights of what is needed if we were to design a peopleās budget. We covered the concerns around a very broad spectrum ranging across agriculture, health, education, pension, NREGA, food security, MSMEs, banking, urban development and climate emergency. We also share concerns around what a budget catering to the needs of the dalits and adivasis and oppressed genders ought to look like.
In the post budget analysis here, we present thematic explorations on what the Economic Survey and the Budget talks about, what it misses, where it falters or what it seeks to hide.