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Editor: Dr. G.G. Parikh | Associate Editor: Neeraj Jain | Managing Editor: Guddi
In the third part of this series, we take a look at the overall approach of the Modi Government towards budgetary revenues and budgetary spending. That would give us pointers towards examining this year’s budget — to see if anything has changed.
In this second part of this year’s budget analysis, we take a look at the economic situation in the country, in the background of which the FM presented her budget.
The first article in our budget analysis series for this year. We begin our discussion of the Union Budget 2023–24 with a brief discussion of India’s external accounts situation. Amazingly, the budget speech does not contain a single line as regards the country’s external accounts situation.
It is going to have disastrous consequences for the crores of policy holders of the LIC; it is also going to adversely affect the Indian economy.
Vivekananda was not a traditional Hindu monk but a modern ascetic with a scientific and materialist outlook. Unlike other saints, he did not offer prayers to the Almighty for his own salvation but sought salvation of the poor and the marginalised.
If the government partially withdraws some of the concessions / subsidies / transfers of public wealth being given to the rich, and imposes some additional taxes on them, it can raise enough additional revenues to finance a big hike in its social sector expenditures.
India is actually known as the disease capital of the world. It probably accounted for a quarter of the total corona pandemic deaths. The reason for India’s health crisis—which became so evident to everyone during the second covid wave—is the dismal state of our public health system.
The social sector expenditures of the Modi Government are not just far lower than the developed countries, they are even lower than its peer countries. And as regards education, the Modi Government has cut the budget for school education by a huge 40% over the 9 budgets it has presented so far.
This is the year 2022, the target year the PM himself had set way back in 2016 for doubling farmers’ income. But like his other promises, this too was a mere jumla, the agricultural sector crisis continues, and so, predictably, this year’s budget speech makes no mention of this promise.
The 2022–23 union budget should have spelt out an economic strategy for reviving the economy and tackling the unemployment and poverty emergency gripping the country. But the FM does not even show cognizance of the problem.
Janata Weekly is India’s oldest independent socialist weekly.
Ever since its founding in 1946, Janata has voiced its principled dissent against all conduct and practice that is detrimental to the cherished values of nationalism, democracy, secularism and socialism, while upholding the integrity and the ethical norms of healthy journalism. For more than seventy years now, week after week, it has continued to analyse the changes taking place in the country and the world from a socialist standpoint, and thus promote the spread of socialist ideology in the country.
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