Industry & Economy
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Budget
‘Every Budget is election Budget’
— Kamal Narang
Strong support: Finance Minister P. Chidambaram’s wife Nalini Chidambaram along with daughter-in-law Srinidhi and son Karti on their way to attend the presentation of the Union Budget in Parliament House, in the Capital on Friday.
Rasheeda Bhagat
Chennai, Feb. 29 It was a supremely confident Finance Minister P. Chidambaram who handled the press conference after presenting Budget 2008. As expected, he had handed out the largest-ever relief package to the long-suffering agri sector, particularly the small and marginal farmers.
Having dished out a whopping Rs 60,000 crore from his kitty, the FM was in no mood to be kind to queries from journalists dubbing the largesse a populist move in an “election Budget”. While he dismissed the “election Budget” tag saying that as elections were being held in India every year, “every Budget is an election Budget”, Chidambaram came down heavily on the person who said that through the massive agri loan waiver, the Congress party had “made all farmers paid members of the Congress party”.
At his scathing best, the FM said those who were against this measure in favour of the distressed farmers of India “have to stand up and be counted; are you for the farmer or are you against the farmer? Let every politician, every political party, every Member of Parliament, stand up and be counted on this.”
The FM’s evolution as a quintessential politician could be seen in his argument that those who were for the farmer should have been moved by the “story of distress and difficulty of the small and marginal farmers” in the last few years.
The highlight of the Congress campaign in the next Lok Sabha elections was echoed in these words: “This government, my prime minister and I, are for the farmer and, therefore, we have consciously taken this decision.”
It was clear that the man who has been constantly heckled in the last four years by allies such as the Left for not having done enough for “inclusive growth”, finally got his moment in the sun.
Coming to the question of providing liquidity to the banking system for this loan waiver, the FM urged the media to give him credit for “some intelligence”; he had done his home work and would come out with a plan for doing this over a period of three years.
To another query on lower growth rate, Chidambaram said, “A GDP growth rate of 8.7- 8.8 per cent, my friend, is not growth to be mocked at. During the NDA regime, the growth rates were 6.5, 6.1, 4.4, 5.8 and 3.8 per cent; the highest growth rate during the NDA’s five year regime under my distinguished colleague was 6.5 per cent.
“The lowest growth rate achieved by our government is 7.5 per cent. There are at least 120 finance ministers in the world, who would give an arm and a leg for an 8.7-8.8 per cent growth.”
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