The Jharkhand Pradesh Congress Committee (JPCC) on Saturday criticized the Union Budget, calling it ‘directionless’ and ‘superficial’. Addressing media persons in Ranchi, JPCC Executive President Rajesh Thakur said that the Union Budget was a theoretical budget that will fail to address the real issues on the ground – inflation, unemployment, falling development index and farmers’ plight.
“The budget is completely directionless when it comes to addressing the burning issues that are plaguing the country. It fails to address inflation, unemployment, falling GDP and farmers’ plight,” said Thakur.
Citing alleged lacunae in the budget tabled by Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitaraman on Saturday, he said that the Ashok Dalwai Committee had suggested that a growth of at least 10.4 per cent in the Agriculture sector will ensure the doubling of farmers’ income by 2022, but there was a growth of only 2.8 per cent in the income of farmers in the current fiscal. “The Government has failed to achieve the suggested growth rate for doubling the income of farmers. Even the new budget has no roadmap to address farmers’ problems in the country,” Thakur said.
Last year, the Government allocated a fund of Rs.75,000 crore under various agriculture schemes to bring an end to the plight of farmers, but the Centre only managed to spend half of the fund. “Their (Government’s) promise was to disburse the funds among 14 crore farmers, but around seven crore farmers did not get any benefits under the schemes. This is the greatest failure of the Government till date,” a press communiqué from the JPCC said.
Highlighting the figures of the Economic Survey Report (ESR), JPCC Spokesperson Alok Kumar Dubey said that the country needs at least 8 per cent Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to achieve the development target, but the ESR has put the growth rate of GDP to 6 per cent. “If we go by the ESR, it is evident that we cannot achieve our dream of becoming a 5 trillion economy by doing what we have been doing since 2014,” he said.
A press communiqué from the JPCC said that the introduction of fresh slabs in income tax was a gimmick to divert the attention of people from the ‘flaws’ in the budget. “The budget has nothing for the youth, the farmers and even MGNREGA (Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employee Guarantee Act) workers,” said Congress leader Suryakant Shukla.
Slamming the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), former JPCC Secretary Aditya Vikram Jaiswal said the BJP refuses to admit that there are problems in the country’s economy. “The budget will make little to no difference to the economic challenges in the country. There is no indication of repairing the financial system in the budget. I would call it a non-budget,” said Jaiswal.