‘Budget Seeks To Balance Viksit Bharat Goal & Coalition Compulsions’
Prof. Dinesh Yadav, who teaches Economics in Lucknow University, says the government has kept its focus on creating more jobs for youth while also practising its coalition dharma. His views:
If one reads the fine print of the Union Budget 2024, you can clearly see it is primarily aimed at the youth. The financial plan of the Budget underlines its strong focus on upskilling initiatives with a strategic allocation of ₹2 lakh crores for schemes dedicated to enhancing both employability and employment in various sectors. Though late it is heartening that the Union government has understood the long term impact of creating more jobs for professionals and students.
Take for example, the move to scrap the Angel Tax. This welcome step will benefit the education and technology sector by encouraging opportunities for investment, scalability and growth. This will not only provide tax certainty but will also prevent unintended consequences on foreign investments.
Since 2014, the Central government has consistently focused on skill development by opening various training units at district level. The provisions in this Budget for skill development breathes new life in the initiative and will definitely be a booster for supporting the youth over the next five years. However, implementation will as always remain a key factor towards its success.
Now let’s see the contentious part: allocating monetary largesse to Bihar and Andhra Pradesh. Clearly, the government opened its treasury for the two states due to coalition compulsions. This is not a hidden fact that the stability of this government depends on the support from the ruling parties of these two state. Simply put, this is the political component of the financial document.
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The government gave a sigh of relief to the working class regarding personal income tax by increasing the standard deduction for salaried people, choosing the new tax regime to ₹75,000, which was earlier ₹50,000. Increasing the lowest income slab from ₹2.5 lakh to ₹3 lakh is another populist addition to the budget.
Reengineering the skill loan scheme, that now offers loans up to ₹7.5 lakh and the comprehensive education loan scheme of up to ₹10 lakh for higher studies are also laudable steps taken by the government as both these initiatives will create a foundation for educational growth from early childhood through higher education.
As expected, the government has given ₹1.52 lakh crore for agriculture and related sectors as against last year’s allocation of ₹1.25 lakh increasing the budget by 21.6%. However, despite the continuous demand of farmers, no announcement has been made in the budget regarding Minimum Support Price and the amount of Kisan Samman Nidhi has also not been increased – it remains only ₹6,000 at the previous year.
This budget seems to be in line with the government’s vision of a developed India – Viksit Bharat, as they call it – by 2047. However, instead of meeting the expectations of taxpayers, businessmen, students and youth, the Modi government appears to be delivering a positive financial environment while fulfilling the commitments of the coalition dharma. Despite the expectations of farmers’ loan waivers, more and more employment generation for youths, extra tax exemption to salaried employees and businessmen and multi-developmental budget to backward areas, the budget simply followed its corrective path.
As told to Rajat Rai
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