Rich in Rhetoric; Poor in Substance, says CITU

Union Budget 2016–17 presented by the union finance minister Arun Jaitley is nothing but a grand exercise in rhetoric, totally devoid of anything substantial that provides relief to the common people and workers. The finance minister sought to camouflage his government’s drive to provide further benefits to the corporate sector by resorting to high sounding words. Given the continuing global economic volatility and vulnerability in the capitalist system, the figures of GDP, current account deficit and fiscal deficit are subject to many internal and external factors and have to be taken with a pinch of salt.

Instead of proposing effective measures to address the burning issue of price rise, the finance minister pats himself on the back claiming that inflation has come down even when the daily experience of the people is otherwise. Attempts to address unemployment by opening of skill development centres, when hundreds of thousands of our educated and skilled youth do not find suitable and decent jobs do not make any sense. While the ban on recruitment in government continues and thousands of jobs are being lost across many industries, the finance minister ridiculously hopes of generating employment by paying the employers’ share of provident fund for three years. 

The union budget sounds the death knell for the public sector, proposing disposal of assets of public sector undertakings including land, in addition to disinvestment of shares. The name of the Department of Disinvestment is being deceptively changed to Department of Investment and Public Asset Management. The upstream oil sector has been further widened for private sector, both domestic and foreign. Huge concessions have been made to prospective private oil corporates. Public sector general insurance will be disinvested. 100 percent FDI is proposed in marketing food products produced in India.

The Motor Vehicle Act is going to be amended opening up passenger transport to private parties resulting in the death of the state public road transport corporations. The Health Protection scheme announced in the budget only indicates that the government is withdrawing itself from its responsibility of providing universal health coverage and moving towards health insurance that would mainly benefit the insurance companies.

While the announcement to speed up rural electrification is laudable, the fact is that today around one lakh mega watt power generation capacity is lying idle due to the high cost of electricity. Merely providing electric connections is not going to help unless electricity tariffs are brought down and the purchasing capacity of people is increased.

Rather than taking strong action to recover the alarming amounts of defaults by big corporate houses to public sector banks, the government has provided for recapitalisation of public sector banks to brush up their balance sheets, thus setting the defaulters go scot-free.

While the finance minister talked of reduction in corporate taxes there is no enhancement of income tax slabs adversely affecting the lakhs of central and state government and public sector employees. On the other hand, workers’ life-long savings in provident fund are being taxed.

The revenue loss due to reduction in direct taxes is to the tune of Rs 1060 crores while an additional burden of Rs 20,670 crores has been imposed on common people through indirect taxes.

The allocation to agriculture and farmer welfare is too meagre to address the serious agrarian crisis that has seen an increase in farmer suicides. It amounts to just eye wash.

The government has again neglected the unorganised workers and the scheme workers in this budget. Despite the consistent demand of the united trade union movement to constitute national fund for providing social security benefits for the unorganised workers and to recognise the lakhs of anganwadi employees, ASHAs, mid-day meal workers, NCLP staff and other sections of scheme workers as workers and provide them minimum wages and social security benefits, this budget totally ignores these demands. While none of the points raised by the central trade unions in the pre-budget meeting have been addressed, the government generously accepted the demands of the employers. The budget does away with the mandatory weekly holidays in shops and other commercial establishments thus denying the tens of lakhs of shop employees of their holidays and increasing their working hours.

On the whole, this union budget once again proves the commitment of this BJP led government to the neo-liberal agenda and its eagerness to satisfy its corporate and big business bosses at the cost of the workers and common people.

Budget is Anti-Farmer, says AIKS

The union budget 2016 is highly disappointing and anti-farmer. The big propaganda of doubling the income of farmers within six years that is by 2022, does not find any supporting schemes to ensure higher income by preventing the exploitation of middlemen, monopoly traders and agro-processing industrialists in the market. Actually this claim of the prime minister and finance minister is nothing but mere eye wash is clear from the budget proposal of 100 percent FDI in FIPB- Foreign Investment Promotion Route-of food products. The budget thus stands for privatisation of agro-processing and marketing which will further aggravate the miseries of farmers by making agriculture economically unviable. 

The budget proposal facilitates domination of market forces by amending APMC Act to create e-platform for marketing of agro produces which may facilitate domination of monopoly trade and agri-business interests. Thus the budget proposals neglect the highly needed measures to overcome the deep agrarian distress. The budget document did not mention peasant suicides that have been increased by 26 percent under the Modi government.

The farmers are reeling under acute agrarian crisis mainly due to exploitation in the market due to un-remunerative price of agro produces. The farmers were expecting measures as per the promise of BJP in its 2014 Lok Sabha election manifesto that MSP based on 50 percent above cost of production will be ensured by the government of India.  But the budget fails to propose any meaningful scheme to ensure that. The e-platform will facilitate easy way of procurement of agro produces in the interests of the traders and industrialists and may not necessarily safeguard the interests of the peasantry.

The budgetary allocations are not satisfactory to support agriculture which provides employment to 55 percent of the workforce and livelihood support to around 65 percent of the population. The government that has recently written off corporate loans to the tune of Rs 1.6 lakh crore did not find single rupee to announce debt waiver to the peasants facing sever debt trap exposes its true class bias. The allocations are inadequate for ware housing, cold storage facility. It stands for PPP model to allow market forces to dominate the agro-processing and marketing sector which is detrimental to farmer’s interest. Only Rs 368 crore has been provided for National Project on Soil Heath and Fertility which is highly scarce.  The enhancement in allocation for MNREGA is much below the actual requirement which is to the tune of Rs 65,000 crore. Food and fertilizer subsidies has been cut by Rs 5000 crore and Rs 2000 crore respectively.

The enhancement of agriculture credit from Rs 8.5 lakh crore to Rs 9 lakh crore does not benefit the majority of the peasantry who are under small and marginal category since they are facing difficulty to access agriculture credit. They already have dues and only the book adjustment used to take place as disbursement of credit.  The Prime Minister Fasal Bima Yojana is only going to benefit the corporate insurance companies. It does not envisage universal coverage since it does not have any provision to ensure coverage of all poor and marginal peasants. 

Budget does not Cater to People’s Needs: AIAWU

 The All India Agricultural Workers Union condemns the callous refusal of the central government to take adequate steps to save the lives and assets of the peasantry and the reduced employment of agricultural labour reeling under drought in 18 states of the country. In this budget the government has allotted only Rs 38,500 crores for MNREGA which is grossly insufficient to deal with the crisis. Also, Rs 7000 crores is due from last year for wages. This will reduce the budget allocation to a figure below last year.

For rural development, the government has allocated Rs 35,984 crores for agriculture and farmers welfare which is nearly Rs 9000 crores less than the last year. For Health schemes too, while Rs 33, 152 crores is allocated this year, these appear only to be projections of fund collection from bonds. For education too, there is no clear allocation but it is bound to be less than adequate as 48,200 schools were closed down last year. To reopen them and add new schools the budget for primary education must be doubled.

SC/ST schemes it appears that while reservations in the private sector are not given, the government is all set to privatiSe them under public private participation, which will eat into funds that should directly reach Scheduled Castes and Tribes.  The PDS is also to be hamstrung by a fund crunch and the promise of 35 Kg of foodgrains per nuclear family will not be possible. Worse, while a larger area is earmarked for highways and roads, experience shows us that more land will be taken and arrears will not be paid in time and contractors and land mafias will once more be unleashed on the peasantry leading to continuing suicides all over the country.

AIFAWH: Budget Neglects Malnourished Children

Calls for Protest Demos on March 1

 NDA government and its finance minister Arun Jaitely in the budget 2016-17 had criminally neglected India’s eight crore malnourished children under six and two crore pregnant women and lactating mothers by not increasing the allocation for the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) scheme in the budget. Moreover, the finance minister has not even mentioned about the biggest challenge the country faces, of alarming levels of malnutrition among our children.

The drastic cut made in the allocations for ICDS in the last budget had affected the scheme badly. Continuous struggles by the anganwadi workers and helpers and the public opinion thus created had forced the government to allocate some more funds to the ICDS as supplementary allocation which was also grossly inadequate. The total allocation made in this budget for ICDS is Rs16,119.9 crores. This is almost half the amount allocated in the 12th plan for the year 2016-17, Rs. 28, 454 crores.

In spite of the election promise of “Review the working conditions and enhance the remuneration of Anganwadi workers” and promise for pension by various governments, through this budget the government had once again turned its back towards the anganwadi workers and helpers. The recommendations of the 45th Indian Labour Conference to recognise the anganwadi workers and helpers as employees, give them minimum wages and pension and other social security benefits are again negated. Since 2011, the remuneration of the anganwadi employees had not been increased whereas the working hours have been increased to make it full time.

This is in spite of the recommendations of various committees including the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Demands for grants for ICDS in 2015-16 for an increase in wages of anganwadi workers and helpers. The finance minister who had written off the corporate taxes to the tune of lakhs of crores and now reduced the corporate taxes in the budget has forgotten his promise to the delegation of Samyukta Morcha of Anganwadi Federations on February 15, 2016 who met him after the biggest ever March to Parliament by the anganwadi workers and helpers.

AIFAWH calls upon all the state unions and anganwadi workers and helpers to protest against government’s attitude by organising protest demonstrations and actions including burning of effigy, all over the country on March 1, 2016, along with other scheme workers. It calls upon the anganwadi employees to be prepared for militant struggles till our demands are met and reach out to the people of the country for support to the struggles to Save ICDS.

AIDWA: Budget Ignores Women

The All India Women’s Association (AIDWA) sharply criticises the union budget presented by the finance minister today as high on rhetoric and low on its content. The big show made about alleviating the distress of poor women by making an allocation of Rs 2000 crores towards meeting the initial cost of 1.2 crore LPG connections is misleading, since these are barely 8 percent of BPL households. Many households cannot afford the current market linked price of Rs 600 per cylinder. The rationing of cylinders and the implementation of the direct cash transfer scheme are already causing much hardship to several poor and middle-class households.

 Agricultural production in India today rests on the shoulders of rural women. They constitute the dominant share of workforce engaged in agriculture. However, in the name of supporting the farmers, this budget has inflicted a huge fraud on them. The finance minister made a tall claim that his “Transformative Budget” will double incomes of farmers over the next five years, but there is nothing in the budget about how this will be achieved. In reality the plan allocation for agriculture at Rs 20,400 crores is lower than the 2014-15 plan allocation of Rs 22,309 crores. The finance minister has cleverly classified a non-plan allocation of Rs 15,000 crores to the ministry of agriculture under a head meant for transferring funds to commercial banks to compensate them for providing subsidised credit to agriculture, and showed it as an increase in spending on agriculture. But these are funds meant for banks and they will not go to the farmers. Allowing 100 percent FDI in rural markets will have a disastrous impact on small farmers, especially women. This will expose Indian agricultural markets to monopolistic control of large multinational companies. With declining work opportunities for women especially in rural areas due to the widespread drought, there was a need to increase the allocation for the MNREGA. However, the nominal increase of just 7.7 percent over revised allocations means that there is no real increase after taking into account inflation.

The “gender budget” which estimates how much of the total spending goes towards benefiting women, shows no increase whatsoever. The revised estimate for 2015-16 is 4.55 percent while the budget allocation for this year 4.58 percent. Last year the allocations to the ministry of women and child development were slashed from Rs 21,194 crores to less than half - Rs 10,382 crores. After the finance minister faced huge criticism from the ministry of women and child development, there was an upward revision and the figures show disbursement of Rs 17,352 crores. However, this year’s allocation is roughly at the same level - Rs 17,408 crores, which is considerably lower than previous allocations. The Modi government only pays lip service to the welfare of mothers and the girl child (maa and betiyaan) while the trend to cut actual spending continues. The ICDS continues to face a cut in allocations; after heavily slashing budgetary allocations to Rs 8000 crores in 2015-16, actual disbursement was Rs 15394 crores last year. But the allocation this year is Rs14,000 crores, significantly lower than the expenditure in the last few years even in nominal terms. Over the last two years, the NDA government has drastically cut down allocations to the Mid Day Meal Scheme. In 2014-15, the allocation for the scheme was Rs 13,152 crores. This year, the allocation is only Rs 9,700 crores.

This budget is notable because it clearly formalises a major shift from public provisioning of health to a model of insurance based provisioning of health care through private-sector health providers. Instead of free provisioning of medicines from public health facilities, government is proposing to limit its role to running just 3000 stores for distribution of subsidised medicines.

The provision of automation facilities for 3 lakh fair price shops and the opening of more and more ATMs and mini-ATMs in rural areas signals a further drive towards introducing cash transfer in the PDS as per the recommendations of the Shanta Kumar Committee report. This will be further strengthened by the legal sanction that the Modi government intends to give to Aadhaar.   Even in nominal terms, the allocation on food subsidy has been cut from last year’s revised estimate by 3.4 per cent. What one expected was a strengthening of the PDS and introduction of more commodities at controlled prices to protect women from steeply increasing prices of essential commodities.

This budget clearly upholds the interests of the market. It has no place for women.

Disappointing Budget for Dalits

 The Dalit Shoshan Mukti Manch has issued the following statement:

The union budget for 2016-17 is disappointing for the dalits of the country. The Scheduled Caste Sub-Plan has been allocated a paltry sum of Rs 24,005 crores which is just 7 percent of the total planned expenditure, while the mandated allocations should have been 16 percent of the total planned expenditure. They are less than half of the stipulated allocations.  

The finance minister made a highly rhetoric speech when he said that, “We are celebrating the 125th Birth Anniversary of Dr B R Ambedkar. This must become the Year of Economic Empowerment for SC/ST entrepreneurs.” His speech has not matched with his deeds.  The allocations for the “Stand Up India Scheme” which is aimed to promote entrepreneurship among SC/STs are meagre, at Rs 500 crores.

The government has proposed to constitute a National Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe Hub in the MSME Ministry in partnership with industry associations in order to “provide professional support to Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe entrepreneurs to fulfill the obligations under the Central Government procurement policy 2012, adopt global best practices and leverage the Stand Up India initiative.” The government’s Public Procurement Policy 2012, requires all central ministries, departments and central PSUs to ensure at least 4 per cent of their supplies from enterprises owned by Dalits (SCs/STs). This order was never implemented. The first comprehensive survey of procurement undertaken by public sector undertakings (PSUs) from micro and small enterprises (MSEs) promoted by Dalit (Scheduled Castes/ Scheduled Tribes) entrepreneurs showed that procurement from SC/ST enterprises was way below target in 2013-14; their supplies were just Rs 419.37 crore in 2013-14 – 0.51 per cent of the total PSU procurement of Rs 81,319.28 crore during the year. What is required is to make the procurements from the dalit entrepreneurs mandatory and monitor it regularly.

The SC/ST backlog posts and vacancies in various departments of the government should be filled up and the necessary provisions for it should be made.