There is no tax break and no handing out of the cash for either for the middle class or for the poor. The scenario of demands drying up is looming large over the entire economy because of falling earnings, yet the indifference towards such criticalities is too obvious. With the selling spree of public sector units, there is also growing demand over the public capital expenditure with the plea that “private investments seem to require that support” to boost demand.

The claims towards sustainable development measures are substantiated with a “transformative approach for economic growth”, with the aid of ‘seven engines’ of roads, railways, airports, ports, mass transport, waterways, and logistics infrastructure’, though each one as for now, stands privatised. About the execution, specifics and other components, budget stands vague. It also appears to be a repeat from the last year’s initiatives yet to be put in practice.

It appears that public infrastructure has been handled with an indifference since there is hardly any detailed account of the particularities, and the attention has been centred around roads and railways, means for transportation. But these are all points that have been taken up in the past too and fail to generate positivity about the budget. The basics have been clearly looked over as the key sectors of health, jobs, national rural employment guarantee scheme, are either marginally or completely missed out. In fact these are the founding pillars of a society that bear the brunt of the development and in the fiscal map for 2023, there is hardly any measure mentioned to boost them.

The looming darkness has usurped more than six million MSMEs (Micro Small and Medium Enterprises) as their shutters are down and with that the employment generation in the sector has also been drying up. Eighty four percent households are living on edge and more than 4.6 crore people are on way to get perished. There were hopes that in the format of rural employment scheme, there would be similar initiative in the urban region also, but contrary to that, even MGNREGS faces shrinking allocations with a slash of 25 percent,

The Rs 73,000 crore figure is the same as the MGNREGS budget estimates, but lower than the revised estimates (RE) of Rs 98,000 crore for the fiscal year of 2021-22, and the actual expenditure of Rs 1,11,170 crore during 2020-21.

Options left for the entire deprived masses are not many. On top of it, with starving underfed existence, they are fighting pandemic too.

According to the pre-budget documents, from 2016-17 estimates, the economy has been facing decline from 8.3 percent to 3.7 percent in 2019-2020, and soon the revision of the fall showed even further steep fall. In a span of less than three years the economy showed a nosedive of actually more than half of what it was. But then it was not all. The other document that came out with the survey showed that it was not the much advocated absence of demand alone, it was the crisis in supply side as well.

In post pandemic days, our masses had to struggle against the slow down of the economy itself, brunt falling down exclusively on them alone. It is the outcome of the ‘celebrated slowdown of the Indian economy’ that is perhaps a significant achievement of the budget also that offers a blueprint for the further deprivation. It is according to the various studies conducted by the government sources only that says that rural population that is one third of the entire population suffer from total absence of resources. Crop boost or the plants dying due to natural calamities, there is absolutely no aid available for them. Added to this is the overall decline in economy that has its own bouquet of miseries.

Two third of the country’s population has been suffering for last five years, without regular wages. One fourth of all workers have been denied real wages. Among them more than two third are agricultural labour. Discontent simmering, farm workers and the small farmers, including the entire farm sector slowly started resisting. The handling of MGNREGA is one example of the exploitative practices. The allocation for National Food Security Act had left crevices in last budget but in 2022-23, government left all pretences and the allocation went as low as possible.

The budget has, with all its stuttering, gone up to only 1.7 lakh crore, a deflationary number, when the need was to rise to the occasion and increase the public expenditure.

When people have to live with tragic loss of livelihood, dignity, and finally lives, without any recourse, it is not frustration that grips them. They simply rise in protest, infallible, like the 13-month dharna of kisans. (IPA Service)