The Finance Minister of India has presented the Union Budget of Rs 21.47 lakh crore for the financial year 2016-17 in the lok Sabha recently. There has been mixed response to the Budget from different quarters but the allocation for social sector, rural areas, farmers, SCs, STs, women and children is quite significant.
It is told in the Budget speech that the Government wants to ensure the distribution of the fruits of growth to farmers, workers, the poor, SCs, STs, women and other vulnerable sections. Budget is one of the important tools of financial planning and it reflects the political economy of the country and priorities of the Government.
The allocations to the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, Ministry of Tribal Affairs and Ministry of Minority Affairs have increased very marginally than the previous year. It is Rs 7,763, Rs 5,329 and Rs 4,195 crore respectively. It is said that the Government will introduce outcome based monitoring of expenditure in these sector by the NITI Aayog. last year the Standup India scheme was introduced to promote SCs, STs and women entrepreneurs to set up green field ventures to create more jobs. It is reported that last year 16,000 new entrepreneurs have come up through the scheme in the areas of food processing, garments and diagnostic centers etc. The number will increase in the current year as priority will also be given to SCs, STs, BCs, minority and women in Pradhan Mantri Mudra Yojana (PMMY) by making twofold the lending target allocation to Rs 2.44 lakh crore. The socially marginalized section has been excluded from the financial market and for inclusive growth financial inclusion is highly required to bridge the gap but it depends on financial literacy and ensuring inclusive access of the section of people where promotional work and affirmative policy at all level is required. The concerned ministries must work more on this to minimize the continued bottleneck which has been affecting the implementation. It is being argued that the allocation for the marginalized section is not adequate and not on the basis of their percentage of population.
The rural development and agriculture are major areas having a sizable allocation for the year 2017-18. The target for agricultural credit is fixed at record level of Rs 10 lakh crore. Along with credit there are a host of agricultural development schemes such as sixty days interest waiver, irrigation, long term irrigation and micro irrigation, insurance, Fiscal Bima Yojana as protection against natural calamities, support price and marketing facilities for agricultural produces. There is also allocation of corpus fund for dairy processing and infrastructural development as inputs support to milk farmers. It is a fact that a majority of our farmers are small and marginal farmers and sharecroppers in rural and tribal areas those who deserve all kinds of support for agricultural activities. The small farmers mostly depend on cooperative societies. The financial institutions and banks have not reached many of the rural and interior parts such as Odisha where about more than 60 per cent of the farmers are sharecroppers and many panchayats have no banks.
So how this huge credit scheme is going to help such poor farmers in backward areas especially in States such as Odisha is yet to be seen. There are also legal and administrative issues such as land ownership along with lack of institutional mechanism to deliver credit to the needy farmers even though there is provision in the Budget. The agriculture budget is going to help the rich land owning farmers. This will widen the disparity in the agriculture sector of the country as the poorest and backward regions may not be able to utilize the allocated resources because of inherent weakness of the region. The farmers of socially marginalised sections such as SC sharecroppers and ST farmers in interior parts are being deprived of access to credit and related benefits. The Budget has no such targeted benefit sharing for the marginalised section engaged in agriculture sector.
The Finance Minister proposed to spend Rs 3lakh crore in rural areas. There have been ongoing programmes for drinking water, sanitation, electrification, linking roads under Pradhan Mantri Grama Sadak Yojana and housing along with other infrastructural development of rural areas. There is allocation for women and children under ICDS. It is told that the open defecation free villages will be given priority for piped water supply. There is allocation for safe drinking water to over 28,000 arsenic and fluoride affected habitations by national rural drinking water supply programme. Though the health and education budget has increased marginally, new scheme has been introduced for women. The welfare of women and children under various schemes across the ministries is Rs 1, 84,632 crores. The Mahila Shakti Kendra in 14 lakh Anganwadi centres and Rs 6,000 support to pregnant women who undergo institutional delivery will be helpful to rural poor women.
The plan to bring one crore households out of poverty and to make 50,000 gram panchayats poverty free by 2018 have been proposed in the Budget under the programme Mission Antyodaya. The budget of MGNREGS has increased to Rs 48,000 crore with assurance for 100 days work along with provision of one crore house by 2019 for the homeless and those living in Kutcha houses through Prime Minister Awas Yojana (gramin). The national housing bank has allocation for financing individual housing loans. The allocation for rural housing will help the marginalized section in rural areas who constitute a major portion of the homeless population.
The allocation for skill development and rural livelihood opportunities has increased. It is targeted for mason training in rural areas to supplement the housing and infrastructure construction work in rural areas. It is expected that all these schemes will bring qualitative change in the rural areas and generate employment but the effectiveness and proper implementation of these programmes have been a matter of concern where there has been no improvement in matters of transparency and accountability of public spending in rural areas. In spite of allocation, MGNREGS has not reached to the job needy card holders. It is a fact that everywhere machines have been deployed in place of human labour. The basic objectives of the rural employment generating scheme has not been followed. The wage and related opportunities such as allowances and social security for the labour have not been improved to engage people in productive assets creation and public infrastructure building. However in the Budget it has been targeted to build farm pond and compost pits out of this programme but some of the issues may get resolved with the increased allocations. The plan for using space technology to plan MGNREGS as digital scrutiny will bring qualitative improvement.
The implementation of all rural development programmes targeting the poor and socially marginalized sections depend on grassroots governance. So it is equally important to spend more on areas of governance improvement and capacity building of the human resources engaged in development administration in rural areas. The capacity building of elected leaders of panchayatraj institutions and grassroots Government officials make ways of reaching the target but more important is the involvement of the people in rural areas more particularly the people from the marginalized sections for whom most of the schemes are targeted. The Budget of the country needs to be discussed among people in order to make them involved for realization of their responsibilities while accessing benefits out of public finance to maintain growth with equity.
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