Pranab plays party tune

POLITICS OF THE BUDGET: The finance minister has also reached out to his home constituency

In his budget speech, when Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee proposed the creation of a women’s SHG Development Fund with a corpus of Rs 500 crore, the first one to thump the desk in appreciation was Sonia Gandhi.

For Gandhi and the party, under the two-pronged pressure of inflation and governance deficit, the union budget was an opportunity to showcase the Congress’ core concern: the social sector. As Gandhi’s loyal soldier, Mukherjee tried to address the issues of health, education, NREGS, etc. His 33-page long speech also took special note of the youth — the singleminded focus of Rahul Gandhi, the party’s future leader.

Last time, the opposition walked out of the speech mid-way in protest. Mukherjee had to make an extra effort to underline to Sonia Gandhi the exemptions he has given to the agriculture sector. This time, the JPC-happy opposition didn’t act dramatic and Mukherjee cruised through his speech.

So when Mukherjee announced the reforms: government’s push for Insurance Act amendments, LIC bill, etc, Gandhi and the party didn’t react. The jury is out on how this will be received by the BJP. But Mukherjee’s speech also highlighted increased allocation (up by Rs 10,000 crore) for Bharat Nirman, more money for the Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana, a 100 per cent raise in the wages of anganwadi workers, specific allocations earmarked towards Scheduled Castes Sub-plan and Tribal Sub-plan, 24 per cent increase in the outlay for education, etc.

Mukherjee also reached out to his own constituency in a limited way. His plan to help handloom weavers, partymen point out, will benefit Jangipur (Mukherjee’s Lok Sabha constituency) which has a large number of handloom workers.

Mukherjee has also allotted Rs 50 crore each to upcoming centres of Aligarh Muslim University at Murshidabad (his political home) in West Bengal and Malappuram in Kerala.

While Mukherjee has never focused on a political career in the state, his budget didn’t overlook the upcoming assembly polls in Kerala, West Bengal and Tamil Nadu. There is a one-time grant of Rs 100 crore to the Kerala Veterinary and Animal Sciences University, Rs 10 crore for setting up a Kolkata Centre of Mahatma Gandhi Antarrashtriya Hindi Vishwavidyalaya, Rs 200 crore grant to IIT, Kharagpur, Rs 20 crore for Rajiv Gandhi National Institute of Youth Development in Sriperumbudur of Tamil Nadu, Rs 20 crore for IIM, Kolkata and Rs 10 crore for Madras School of Economics.

Trinamool Congress (whose chief Mamata Banerjee was busy sketching and showing her efforts to Union Minister Jairam Ramesh while Mukherjee read his budget) described Mukherjee’s efforts as a “restrained, strategic budget”. Many in the alliance camp also felt that Mukherjee could have given more income tax relief enabling the party to take on the opposition in these difficult times.

Predictably the opposition slammed the budget. BJP leader Rajnath Singh, who often speaks on farmers, said the budget was hypocritical about its concerns.

The budget hiked defence moderately (11.5 per cent), took a caring view of the victims of law enforcement agencies engaged in internal security duties by making provisions or Rs 9 lakh for men suffering from disability in counterinsurgency operations, and made budgetary allocation of Rs 100 crore for Ladakh and Rs 150 crore for Jammu for development.

Mukherjee also agreed to finance recruitment of 2,000 youths in five paramilitary forces.