Union Budget a donkey’s egg, say southern states

“This is the same party that advocates for 'One Nation, One Election',” quipped Congress MP Shashi Tharoor while reacting to the Union Budget.

The MP from Kerala was referring to the budget singling out Bihar, to the exclusion of other states.

Reactions from all non-BJP-ruled states were similar, and the disappointment was high. Every state had submitted a wishlist to the finance minister, including Bihar, of course; but this has become an empty ritual, they seemed to suggest. The southern states (with the exception of N. Chandrababu Naidu’s Andhra Pradesh) could not hide their bitterness.

Union minister for fisheries and minority affairs George Kurian made it worse by defending the budget. “If Kerala wants more aid, let them admit they are backward,” he declared, triggering a storm of protests. His feeble defence of the budget left the state furious: Communist and Congress leaders alike demanded he take back his words.

The reactions indicated that the North–South divide continues to widen.

Already concerned over their dwindling share of the national tax collections through devolution, the budget proposals added to the southern states’ angst. Unhappy with perceived neglect in the share of the taxes collected by the Centre, Southern chief ministers were very open about their perception of things.

At a recent conclave, P.T.R. Thiagarajan, the articulate information technology minister from Tamil Nadu, called for a dialogue among the southern states to project and protect their interests. This will likely find traction in the southern capitals in coming months and years.

The feeling is growing among the opposition-ruled southern states that they are not only being made to pay for the profligacy of their poorer northern cousins, but are also being discriminated against for voting against the BJP.

The budget reactions were couched in similar language across the states south of the Vindhyas. In Hyderabad, Telangana’s state Congress chief Mahesh Kumar Goud used a particularly pithy expression: a ‘donkey’s egg’, he said.

New Delhi had once again let down the state, with no new schemes or meaningful fund allocation, said Goud, pointed out that critical projects — including the railways, bifurcation promises (made when the state was first carved out of an undivided Andhra Pradesh), lift irrigation for the Palamuru Rangareddy project, a new IT investment region and an IIM (Indian Institute of Management) for the state — remained up in the air.

Despite the finance minister being a ‘daughter-in-law’ of the state (since she was married to economist Parakala Prabhakar) and her quoting Telugu poet Gurajada Apparao (‘A nation is not just its land, but its people’) in her speech, Goud lamented, Nirmala Sitharaman had nothing to offer Telangana, which sent Rs 40,000 crore in GST revenue to the Centre, Goud said.

He alleged that it was because the state was ruled by an Opposition party, the Congress, that the finance minister chose to ignore its interests.

The state opposition party, the Bharatiya Rashtra Samiti (BRS) of K. Chandrasekhara Rao too joined in the chorus. K.T. Rama Rao, KCR’s son and working president of the party, said the last budget had given nothing, and this one was much the same.

The finance minister did not even utter the word ‘Telangana’ in her speech, he said. He compared it to throwing a pail of cold water over the embers of Telangana’s hopes. In an eloquent comparison, KTR said the finance minister had served Bihar ‘a lavish dinner on a golden plate’ while starving Telangana.

“A raw deal,” he called it, saying there was no mention of funding educational institutions, development works or industry; there was nothing on the state’s Bayyaram steel project, while showering generosity on its neighbouring state’s steel plant, a reference to the Visakhapatnam Steel Plant (VSP). The people of Telangana would not trust the BJP again, he warned.

The sarcastic mention of Bihar was to draw attention to the funds directed towards the eastern state. Among other things, Sitharaman announced the setting up of a board in Bihar to promote consumption of makhana, more familiar to English speakers as fox nuts, or lotus plant seeds, a traditional food. It was just another sop (however useless) to the eastern state, which figures predominantly in the BJP’s calculus.

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In Thiruvananthapuram, CPI(M) chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan called it a ‘political, not an economic document’. It totally violated federalism, he said, punishing some states (southern ones) and rewarding others (read: Bihar). It had no aid for Wayanad district, which had suffered debilitating landslides with over 400 dead, he noted, and no funds for climate change (Kerala has been hit hard by floods and other disasters in 2024)... and also no backing for the Vizhinjam port.

“Our farmers and our industry have been neglected and our borrowing limits have been severely curtailed,” Vijayan said.

Leader of the Opposition V.D. Satheesan of the Congress echoed the CM’s views for once. “No relief for Wayanad, no mention of Kerala,” he told the media. Just an election gimmick, he noted. Kerala had sought a Rs 24,000 crore special package to fund projects, but the budget had nothing to offer.

Karnataka was also strident in its objections. Congress chief minister Siddaramaiah said New Delhi was favouring Andhra Pradesh and Bihar while ignoring Kannadigas, who contributed the second-highest taxes in the nation.

“The Centre has given us an empty pot,” he remarked. He lambasted the central ministers and MPs from the state for remaining silent — the BJP was ‘punishing those who spoke up against the Manusmriti and stood up for the Constitution’, he said.

He also charged that the BJP was penalising the state for voting Congress in the assembly elections; but it was also not bothered by the sizeable number who voted for them, comfortable in ‘a betrayal of their own supporters’, he claimed.

He ridiculed the income tax exemption up to Rs 12 lakh, saying it didn’t matter to the common man; that 70 per cent of Indians earned Rs100–150 a day and this ’exemption‘ did nothing for them.

In Tamil Nadu, chief minister M.K. Stalin also dismissed the budget as an ‘election gimmick’, with nothing in it for the state.

“TN ranks high in all indicators, but gets little. If the funds are going to go to states facing elections or BJP-ruled states, why call it a Union budget at all?” he asked.

The opposition AIADMK’s Edappadi Palaniswamy also said that the budget reads more like a Bihar revenue-expenditure report, than a central government accounting statement.

Other parties too, including actor Vijay’s newly floated Tamilaga Vetri Katchi, noted the absence of any funding or schemes meant for the state, terming it a notable omission.

Veteran Andhra politician N. Chandrababu Naidu of the Telugu Desam Party was the only southern chief minister to welcome the budget. He said it gave priority to youth, farmers and women, provided a boost to growth sectors and lifted a huge burden on the salaried middle class by raising the income tax exemption limits.