IN the history of post-British Bharat past 63 years nobody had slapped on Bharat such an anti-Bharat, anti-Hindu, anti-poor, anti-farmer, anti-women, anti-youth, anti-lower middle class, anti-middle class budget ever! There were bad budgets, there were lame budgets, there were ineffective budgets, and there were no budgets! But such an openly announced ‘political’ and anti-Bharat budget? Never! That too at the time when from educated youth to middle class housewives, from labourers to farmers, from students to small traders, from road-side foodstall wallahs to door-to-door vegetable sellers, from train traveller to bus traveler-all have been reeling under tremendous hikes in prices of almost everything! The shamelessness does not stop at the nature of the budget, the minister whom we all respect so much for his pro-Bharat, pro-Hindu stands many a times, perhaps due to Sonia Gandhi’s irrational internationally motivated pressure, our veteran, erudite and brilliant Finance Minister even made an announcement in one of the prominent financial newspapers on the front page: “I get a back-up from civil servants and economists, but I am a political activist. And my budget is essentially a document that follows our political ideology.” Here’s the catch!
In a democratic country, annual budgets are supposed to be made for the public well-being and not to promote anybody’s political ideology. However sincere, art-loving, well-meaning, intelligent, visionary, etc, our Finance Minister may be but the political party he belongs to has messed up Bharat for a long time and now even has dirty designs to finish Bharat’s strength: Bharat’s common man on whose name they asked for votes. Even in the justification of raising prices of essential food items like milk, sugar, pulses and vegetables their deception is seen clearly. On one page of the Economic Survey they say-prices went up due to global economy and global fuel price hike. On another page they blame the price hike on low rainfall in Bharat. Yet on another page they even say that imports of food-grains were low therefore prices are high. Political lies can be seen all the time from many political parties during election times and even later in their rules. Common public know it all and discount many such lies as ‘part of netagiri.’ But as I had said in my earlier article, when any lower middle class or middle class housewife has to see her child crying out of hunger in spite of she and her husband working hard, some of them even paying taxes, then their patience withers away. They can no more tolerate lies that tear their pockets especially to fill up someone else’s pockets as a vote bank fuzzy math! Under pressure of the ruling political party, even the political science double graduate and a sharp politician Finance Minister has fallen into this trap and has made such a blunder to hurt the largest social chunk of Bharat that henceforth it would be most difficult for this party to face the aam aadmi ever again!
Not that our brilliant politician FM does not know it. Therefore he even tried to create a façade of increasing the limits of taxable income in the hope that the salaried middle class would praise the government. Here’s the logical fallacy. The same salaried middle class is also an intelligent lot who can see through such cheap gimmicks. This class has realised that the government has cheated them very badly.
If they save around Rs 10,000 in taxes, they would have to pay much more than that for everything due to fuel price hike as it has a spiralling impact on food prices, vehicle usage, their children’s fees and buses, gas cylinders, rents they pay and what not! So even aam aadmi feels cheated by the budget. Obviously so! The budget which should have a social basis in a country like Bharat, if it has political foundation as the FM admits himself, its fallout is inevitable.
In a planned expenditure outlay of 3.73 lakh crore where Rs 1.37 lakh crore has been kept for infrastructure (and the same time cement and steel have been made expensive in the budget! To benefit whom?), Rs 48,000 crore for Bharat Nirman. Which Bharat is this government speaking of? Farmer has been given direct benefit of 5 per cent loan rate, foreign agriculture machines are made cheaper and at the same time the tractor that he would use would eat up much more of his money in diesel. There is absolutely no provision to protect his other wealth that is his land and his bulls and cows. Farmer has been once again made a total orphan by this budget. Bharat Nirman then becomes just rhetoric and mere rhetoric cannot be a fact! Rs. 40,100 crore for Rahul Baba’s pet NREGA which claims to give employment to all youth and others in the rural areas. If so, then why Sachar report claims that Muslim youth is unemployed? Does that mean Rahul’s NREGA does not employ Muslims? Government’s own reports like these expose Rahul’s claims. We know that NREGA is a big hollow hangama, otherwise wherever there is this scheme on, farmers would not have committed suicides there at least. It is a big eyewash and some RTI data may even expose more vote bank games from these schemes. This means the money kept for this is all waste. Then comes Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan. Whose education really is spoken of here? If it is for all then School education Aid would have been much more than mere Rs. 1200 crore! Meaning, this entire money would either go to madarsas, sponsoring IAS classes of Muslim boys and girls, giving funds for Muslim education and the rest would go to Church sponsored education (meaning conversion) activities.
The strangest part is that Rs 2600 crore have been earmarked for Muslims in this budget. Only Rs. 400 crore for Eastern Bharat’s green revolution where Sundarbans are facing the risk of submerging in the sea! Only Rs. 500 crore for 3000-km-long Maa Ganga’s cleaning-for 1 km just Rs. Rs 16,000. This is the worst ever mockery of Hindu sentiments! During my Kashi visit, we found out that just a Kapildhara Teerth needs Rs 2 crore for cleaning which has been dirtied by Muslims staying nearby!
The Ganga is a major source of water for most of North even for drinking and irrigation. Along with Hindus, this government has insulted even Uttar Pradesh and Bihar by such small money for the Ganga! Rs. 2400 crore is for the unorganised sector. Many have not given much thought to this. The unorganised sector in Bharat is 98 per cent controlled by Muslims. Fruits, vegetables, large growers, vendors, distributors, hair-cutting salons and individuals, and makers and other religious thing-makers like camphor, sindoor etc, shoe-repairers, labourers in the weaving sector, vehicle repairers, kite-makers, bakers-the list is long. These trades are captured by Muslims, sometimes even snatched from Hindus by force. Coastal area fishing is mostly controlled by Muslims.
Rs. 2400 crore allocation for the unorganised sector is a straight vote bank politics as the FM admits that his budget is political. But 85 per cent majority in Bharat is not idiot. Apart from many existing concessions, quotas for Muslims, open allocation of Rs 2600 crore and this subtle showering of Rs 2400 crore in the name of unorganised sector will not go so well with Hindus and the smart politician FM faltered here. This would hurt his party in Bengal elections as never before and UP and Bihar may not be much different.
(The author is a renowned cancer surgeon and international secretary general of VHP. He can be contacted at drtogadia@gmail.com.)
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