Didi calls it tolerable, Left raises red flag

POLITICS OF THE BUDGET: Opposition says Budget does little to take reforms forward, belongs to pre-liberalisaton era

The Congress party was polite in its reaction to Union Budget 2012-13 and the Opposition, National Democratic Alliance, predictably, critical. But the ally the ruling coalition was most nervous about — the Trinamool Congress — certified the Budget as “tolerable”, drawing sighs of relief from the UPA.

Though Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee repeated the consensus mantra throughout his Budget speech, especially in the context of insurance, banking and retail, Opposition parties, for whom this was meant, remained unimpressed. CPI leader Gurudas Dasgupta said it was a “clerical Budget” and did not need a finance finister, adding any secretary could have drafted it. Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader and Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha, Arun Jaitley, said the Budget belonged to the era before the liberalisation and it did very little to take reform projects forward.

An unexpected attack on the Budget came from women politicians cutting across party lines. They slammed the Budget for the pittance that was doled out to women. A Congress MP, who refused to be named, said she was appalled at the insensitivity shown to women in the Budget. BJP MP Smriti Irani pointed out the irony of UPA ostensibly going in for “gender budgeting” but not making any allocations for women’s issues like prevention of domestic violence or combating female foeticide. “All that the Budget has done is raise the corpus of the Women’s SHG’s Development Fund from Rs 200 crore to Rs 300 crore.” In contrast, Gujarat had allocated Rs 1,500 crore credit, benefitting 2.5 million women, she said.

Shiromani Akali Dal’s Harsimrat Kaur said, “What’s wrong with this government? Women constitute 50 per cent of the population and yet there is nothing for them. A paltry sum is being doled out to women farmers.”

Former MP Subhashini Ali also slammed the “total absence of even any usual tokenism to women.”

Interestingly, TMC leader Sudip Bandyopadhyay made common cause with the reigning regional sentiment and raised the banner of the “states in distress” theme. Making common cause with Kerala and Punjab, he said all three states were caught in “debt traps” and stressed that West Bengal was seeking moratorium for three years on its interest of Rs 22,000 crore a year on loan repayment. But he also stressed, “We are not in a confrontational mode. We want the interest of the poor to be protected.”

Home Minister P Chidambaram, also the former finance minister, said, “At the end of a difficult year, the FM has laid the foundation for fiscal consolidation, reorganisation and growth in this Budget. I am sure in the next three to four years we will be back to the high growth path.”

Samajwadi Party MP Shailendra Kumar, however, called it a “mixed Budget”.

“The Budget is urban oriented,” said BSP leader Vijay Pratap Bahadur, adding, “Unless you take steps to increase the production of wheat, vegetables and other commodities, there is no meaning of the Budget. The Budget will increase the prices of commodities further.” Both SP and BSP are supporting the UPA government.

Former finance minister and BJP stalwart Yashwant Sinha stressed that Mukherjee had presented a Budget with a high dose of taxation. “Never in recent history have taxes been increased this much.”