Huge expectations — such as a tax holiday for incomes up to ₹5 lakh — riding on the BJP-led government’s maiden Budget were destined for disappointment as no dispensation has a magic bullet to cure the ills of any economy.

So Finance Minister Arun Jaitley too began his Budget speech on the sombre note of the challenges he faced, the need to exercise “fiscal prudence” and contain “mere populism and wasteful expenditure”.

Much in a name

Topping the Budget proposals were announcements of schemes with politically correct names. Such as the Shyama Prasad Mukherji Rurban Mission, to replicate the Gujarat model of reaching good infrastructure to rural areas; the Deendayal Upadhyaya Gram Jyoti Yojana to augment power supply in rural areas, the Ganga cleaning project, and of course a whopping ₹200 crore for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s dream proect — the Sardar Patel Unity statue in Gujarat!

Next came welfare schemes for the poor, which sent the equity markets diving sharply. After all, how could a market, where the next 10 minutes are uncertain, make sense of the allocation of ₹200 crore for start-up ventures by SC youth or ₹100 crore for the future welfare of STs?

The BJP, which rode to a huge victory on issues such as women’s safety and youth employment, forgot neither. But grand sounding schemes for women’s safety only flattered to deceive. To make women safer in public transport buses and cities, the FM had only ₹50 crore and ₹150 crore respectively, to spare. One of the longest Budget speeches had details on neither. Even the high sounding beti bachao-beti padhao (save and educate the girl child) scheme, meant to combat “apathy towards the girl child” and ensure her education, got a mere ₹100 crore.

The eye-catchers

But what caught the eye in an otherwise bits-and-pieces Budget were ambitious schemes that would enthuse our youth… such as the setting up of five more IITs in Jammu, Chhattisgarh, Goa, Andhra Pradesh and Kerala, and five IIMs in Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, Bihar, Odisha and Maharashtra, and a centre for excellence in humanities in Madhya Pradesh. The cost: ₹500 crore.

If External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj had recently charmed a Haj delegation in the Capital by speaking in chaste Urdu, the Budget too had something for the minorities — a programme for upgrading skills and training in their ancestral arts, and another ₹100 crore for modernising madrasas.

Another promise of Modi to farmers during his relentless campaign also saw fruition. A plethora of schemes for the farm sector included the setting up of agri and horticulture varsities and research institutes in Andhra Pradesh, Rajasthan, Telangana and Haryana at a cost of ₹200 crore; two agri-research institutes in Jharkhand and Assam at a cost of ₹100 crore; and soil health cards for every farmer and mobile soil testing labs. Others schemes were finance for joint groups of landless farmers, a ₹500 crore Price Stabilisation Fund, integrated markets and interest subvention for short-term crop losses. Proposals to help and recognise those who toil to put our food on the table.

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