My sister i am there for you

Since the present congress led UPA government would be facing general elections next year this budget had many reasons to be an anticipated budget. But this anticipation just dampened the spirits of many classes of Indian society . It fulfilled neither the hopes and aspirations of business class nor of the poor people. Just like railway budget it was more of political nature rather than populist. This time the tax slab for various income categories has not been revised and has been adopted as it was last year. Tax credit of rupees 2000 for income upto rupees 5 lakh has been provided. Since the fiscal deficit is already too high at 5.2% and lack of high revenue sources and burgeoning expenditure make the situation more worse  , the government instead of providing a tax credit of rupees 2000 upto income of 5 lakh could have provided it upto an income of  rupees 3 lakh. People earning above 3 lakh won’t mind paying  rupess 2000 as tax for the development of the nation. Here our government lost another source  though quite small to generate income and help contain fiscal deficit.  A hike of 6% on excise duty on mobiles costing above rupees 2000 has been introduced. This could have been instead done for mobile phones costing above rupees 20,000. The government’s aim of right to free access to knowledge , communication services  and new media has been curbed and choked itself by the government. Allocation of rupees 532 crore for post offices to provide various banking services is a good move as it would facilitate rural people with minimum knowledge of banking jargons to easily approach nearby post – offices and get their job done.  An 18% rise in excise duty on cigarettes and cigars is just a source to earn more income and tax high income people as it would hardly affect them. The government should have made a similar move for products such as bidis and pan – masalas to curb high incidences of deaths caused due to mouth and lung cancer. Unfortunately this government is more focused on raising revenue and securing its vote- bank, that is why it is least concerned for public health. A provision has been made to set up private radio FM stations in 289 cities . Indeed a good move for communication infrastructure but instead of allowing private stations the government could have allowed a mix baggage of private and public FM stations to achieve dual aim of fulfilling its responsibility and allowing private stations to flourish at the same time. A grant of rupees  100 crore has been made to Aligarh Muslim University, Banaras Hindu University and Tata institute of Social Sciences.

However no move has been made in terms of strengthening primary and secondary government schools which lie in a ramshackle state . Finance minister announced during his speech “ The right to Education Act is firmly in place , while announcing rupees 27,250 crore to Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan in FY 14”. How can we say that “right to Education Act is firmly in place” when so many teachers show high rate of truancy and many private schools still haven’t allowed reservations for poor category students as stipulated in the act. Again allotting funds to these higher institutions without upgrading the primary and secondary institutions would mean that students from well off urban areas would occupy the seats and thus no development would ever take place in terms of a particular geography or region. An allocation of rupees 2 trillion has been made for defence sector. This huge allocation has been made in the light of high exports of technical and technological instruments which our country is very well capable of innovating and producing provided the government gets serious towards research and development. Instead of allocating such huge amounts the government can infact allocate this half of this amount for supporting and upgrading indigenous technological industries and institutions . A rebate of rupees one lakh has been provided for first home loan of upto rupees 25 lakh but no provision has been made for slum dwellers who get displaced by these profit – oriented private bodies . Is the government not responsible to such people? Lastly the government in order to secure its female vote – bank has set up a NIRBHAYA FUND of rupees 1000 crore. The aim of this fund is to provide a safety net to women but no directions have been provided for utilization of the fund. All in total the budget neither provides any measures to contain inflation so as to provide some relief to low income families nor it takes away anything in the form of tax from them. A political not populist budget.