The Odisha Budget 2015-16 appears to have lacked focus and has nothing new to offer. Most of the provisions made in it merely took forward the last year’s half-completed projects as a substantial part of last year’s Budget amount had been left unspent.
The main complaint seemed to be that no major social sector-friendly initiatives had been proposed, when the Naveen Patnaik Government has been asserting that it is committed to inclusive development.
Finance Minister Pradip Kumar Amat appears to have chosen a safer route by not fiddling with tax rates and bringing cosmetic changes in the Budget. Hampered by resource crunch and fall in the collection of revenue, he did not dare to initiate bold measures to boost up the sagging economy.
The State Plan size has gone up by only three per cent from Rs 38,810 crore in the current fiscal to Rs 40, 150 crore in 2015-16. The Government will borrow Rs 7,356 crore to fund the expenditure.
For a developing State like Odisha with 83 per cent still living in rural areas and 60 per cent dependent on agriculture for their sustenance, the FM has left this volatile sector to languish further. The Budget outlay for agriculture and allied sectors has been fixed at Rs 10,903 crore for 2015-16 compared to Rs 542.22 crore in 2014-15, up by only 14.26 per cent against a 33-per cent rise in the Budget allocation in 2014-15 over the previous year.
The share of the agricultural sector in the total Budget allocation is 12.90 per cent, which is not significantly different from the earlier Budget. It is noted that the budgetary share for agriculture was 11.87 per cent in 2013-14 and 11.9 per cent in 2014-15. The budget for the Agriculture Department is Rs 3124.38 crore, which is 28.65 per cent of the total Budget for the agriculture sector. The share of the Agriculture Department was 30 per cent in 2013-14 (BE) and 34 per cent in 2014-15.
Similarly, the budgetary allocation of Rs 3,855.88 crore for the Health and Family Welfare Department is Rs 66.86 crore less than Rs 3,922.74 crore allocated in 2014-15. The share of the health budget came down by 0.32 per cent (4.56 %) of the total budget which was 4.88 per cent in 2015-14. For the next fiscal, as share to the Gross State Domestic Product (GSDP), it is 1.11 per cent, which was 1.20 per cent in 2014-15.
The budget for the School and Mass Education (S&ME) Department has marginally increased from Rs 9,327.12 crore in 2014-15 (BE) to Rs 9,979.49 crore in 2015-16 (BE). The increase is very marginal as compared to the trend in last five years’ budget allocations for the department.
As a percentage of the GSDP, the education budget is only 2.86 per cent with a decrease of 0.1 per cent over the previous year 2014-15 (BE) against preferred allocation of 6 per cent of GSDP to fulfil the commitment under MDGs. A large number of the marginalised section of people still living in sheer poverty, the FM has not proposed anything innovative and drastic to ensure inclusive development.
In fact, the Budget allocation for social development of Scheduled Tribes, Scheduled Castes, Other Backward Classes and Minorities has decreased from Rs 2,456.29 crore in 2014-15 to Rs 2,372.34 crore in 2015-16. This is (3.42%), i.e, Rs 84 crore less than the current fiscal. More so, the share of the department has declined by 0.26 per cent (2.82%) of the total budget which was 3.06 per cent in 2015-14.
Still worse is the allocation to the Women and Child Development Department, which has come down from Rs 4,666.65 crore in 2014-15 to Rs 4,162.62 crore in 2015-16. Allocation for the Special Nutrition Programme under this department which is meant for providing supplementary foods under the ICDS programme has decreased from Rs 83.80 crore to Rs 70.10 crore. In fact, the whole budget exercise is just old wine in new bottle.