A manifesto read out in the garb of a ‘budget speech’

Possibly for the first time in the history of Indian Parliament, a finance minister read out a party manifesto in the garb of a budget on Friday.

Piyush Goyal seemed to announce major concessions to middle-class income taxpayers, but with the rider that the rebates and sops he was announcing with great flourish were not meant for the financial year 2019-20 (because this is merely a vote on account). It would be for the next government, which has to be in place by May 26 this year, to get the proposals approved and implement them from the next year.

The smug stop gap Finance Minister had no hesitation announcing a large number of concessions on the income tax front, not applicable for now, a dole of ₹500 per month to the small and marginal farmers with less than two hectares of land holding through a new scheme called the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi (PM-KISAN) with direct transfer to the bank accounts of the concerned farmers.

For the first time a finance minister announced a retrospective sop and declared that the first instalment, amounting to ₹2000, to the farmers would be paid by March 31.

Still the mood on treasury benches was subdued. Many of the allies were absent and the back benches were muted in the Lok Sabha. Prime Minister Narendra Modi however thumped his desk repeatedly and energetically, prompting others on the treasury benches to follow. Amusingly he could be seen thumping the desk even while Goyal referred to him directly and was busy praising him.

An Opposition MP pointed out that sops for the first time have come with the rider, “if we return to power”. Alternately it binds a future government, particularly if the Opposition returns to power, to honour this or earn the people’s ire even before it settles down to work, leaving hardly an elbow room.

To circumvent the criticism that this Government is announcing schemes for the period beyond its life term, the finance minister also made a slew of announcements as part of the Revised estimates for the current financial year, 2019-20.

The greater part of Piyush Goyal’s an-hour-and-forty minute long speech was an account of what the Modi government achieved in the last five years, which he concluded with a couplet penned by a poet, he did not care to name: “Ek paun rakhta hoon, hazar raaste khul jaate hain (One little step I take open up a thousand new paths)”.

The minister went overboard extolling the achievements in last five years of this Government citing for instance the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana, not caring to acknowledge that this was merely renamed Indira Awas Yojana, a housing scheme for the rural poor introduced by Rajiv Gandhi which has been providing houses to the rural poor for several decades now.

Similarly, while the media have widely reported how lack of funding from the Government is silently killing the UPA rural employment scheme MNREGA, the minister announced ₹60,000 crore allocation in revised estimates for MNREGA, still lower than the previous year.

For a Government whose leader refused to face a single press conference throughout his term, the finance minister claimed, “We have ushered in a new era of transparency. We have given a corruption free government,” he said, unmindful of the charge of huge corruption in purchase of Rafael from French company Dassault.

To counter the charge of having bartered away the Defence concerns of the nation through this deal, the minister made a special mention of the sponsored movie, “Uri, a surgical strike” and urged all others to go and see it also offering a tax sop to movie theatre owners in the process to enable them to see many more such movies.

Ignoring the widespread scepticism of the state of economy now being articulated even in reputed foreign journals, the stop gap Finance Minister claimed they have brought down inflation from 10.1% in 2009-14 to 4.6% “which is lower than the inflation during the tenure of any other Government.

Similarly repudiating the experts’ data on fiscal deficit, Goyal who filled in only after the preparation of this interim budget claimed that the deficit has been brought down from 6% in the UPA regime to 3.4% in 2018-19.

How many people take his speech seriously remains to be seen. But full marks to Piyush Goyal for trying to be as convincing as he could possibly be.