Budget 2023: Special attention towards rural economy to create employment opportunities

Within the scope of five-year governance, the Budget 2023 should be seen as a precursor to the times ahead, in view of the political thinking of current leaders.

Furthermore, the new initiatives in this Budget need to be judged in the context of the “Impact of Covid-19-driven trauma that the whole country went through, and key lessons derived from it”.

No one can forget the sight of millions of villagers (with small children on their shoulders), who were working in large cities, walking 1000s kilometres on foot to their own villages, seeking safety for life.

Everyone, worldover, has realised that the most precious aspects of human life are access to food, closeness to family and a healthy environment. All other things can wait. This profound learning inspires the central theme of this Budget by Nirmala Sitharaman.

Although one needs to wait and see whether adequate resources would definitely get deployed in right way, the spirit of realisation that “The Rural-economy” has to be the real pivot of India’s future strategies is very much visible in Seetharaman’s current Budget.

We in India have been making one constant error for the past 75 years through the concentration of opportunities, capital, and knowledge in a few large cities, making village folks migrate and live in cities in unhygienic conditions. This Budget seems to be the right step to bring about a course-corrective directional-shift through the “Onset of Reverse Migration.”

Proposed Decentralised storage systems, along with holding-capital capacity, is a fundamental issue to enhance the price negotiation ability of small farmers of India, who represent over 80% of the farming community

Let us see some of the encouraging propositions of this budget.

• Proposed Decentralised storage systems, along with holding-capital capacity, is a fundamental issue to enhance the price negotiation ability of small farmers of India, who represent over 80 per cent of the farming community.
• Over 80 million women SHGs (self-help groups) organised through microfinance represent the real backbone of the Rural economy beyond farming. However, they are currently limited in their scope greatly due to the absence of professional management abilities. This Budget has recognised “this critical missing need”. Well-networked young professionals, once deployed as effective business and management trainers, can elevate the business scope of rural women multi-folds. Experience shows that much of rural talent remains unmonetised simply because of a few missing simple skills
  that they are capable of learning on the job, such as accounts and communications, etc.
• For instance, Agriculture Accelerator Fund is to be set up to encourage agri startups by young entrepreneurs in rural areas. We all may personally know a talented rural youth, currently employed in cities, who can opt for this scheme and become a businessman instead of remaining in a job all his life. Remember, each new entrepreneur is like an engine that creates jobs for many eventually. Dealing with maximum risks, farmers already have an “entrepreneurial mindset”.
• Over the next 3 years, one crore farmers will be assisted in adopting natural farming. Ten thousand bio-input resource centres will be set up. These centres can be designed in such a way that 10,000 rural entrepreneurs get created in rural areas. Moreover, bio centres will require networking with scientists and technologists. Thus creating “knowledge-flow ecosystems”. When villages are equipped with knowledge centres and rural-centric entrepreneurs, it would automatically lead to local resource-mapping and identification of new business opportunities based on local inputs. In the case of natural farming, we need to define and standardise the process of natural farming. Also, a lot of research needs to support the process of this type of farming.
• These and similar new opportunities in the food and nutrition sector, renewable energy sector, etc., will help villagers grow their income through new value-added enterprises and put a break on “charity-led easy money” through empowering self-respecting villagers. One should hope that this and future governments will allocate adequate funds, at least 2 per cent of GDP, over the coming 5-10 years.
• Let us hope policymakers can set specific targets of creating at least 1 new first-generation entrepreneur in each of the 7 lakh villages every year. Imagine an India where villagers opt for opportunities to be entrepreneurs instead of livelihood schemes like MNREGA.
• The key realisation before the policymakers need to be that new money comes through the utilisation of human time engaged in productive activities. And India’s greatest tragedy has been the camouflage of idle human time in rural India. The hidden potential of future growth requires the “triggering” of vast rural manpower through wealth-creative activities.

This Budget emphasises a huge thrust to infrastructure with a capex of 10 lakh Crores, building infra across the entire nation, as the changing face of the road systems has been very encouraging during the past several years. However, one should hope that the realisation of the “importance of rural economy” will trigger a new dimension in infrastructure investing by coupling it with “new wealth creative village-economy” and “reversal of migration” as essential elements. Let roads not just be a transport agenda, thus increasing the multi-fold outcome from the same infra-capex with a little twist in objective-setting. This needs to be understood in the context of metro cities becoming unlivable due to excessive population. No wonder the population density in cities like Mumbai and Delhi is 30,000 persons per sq. km. compared to 300 persons per sq. km, merely 100 km away. Remember, we require Rs 50 to 100 crores to make 1 km of fly-over-road in cities, whereas only Rs 1-5 crore may be needed to build 1 km of regular road anywhere. It is high time India starts building domain-specific wealth-creative infrastructure and opportunities in rural areas, thus attracting the population away from cities to modern new villages.

We in India treat the annual budget day as another festival day, with the majority concerned with how taxes would affect their real income. Concern for structural issues is generally limited for policymakers and academicians. It is time it can be turned into an exercise for our classrooms in colleges so that real problems become identified and prioritised in a thoughtful way, from the bottoms-up. Rather than a secret being opened on “D-Day”, may our budget-making become an open obsession for us to plan our future, through citizen-initiatives.