The Central Working Committee of All India Agricultural Workers Union condemns this budget as anti people as it fails do to anything about the huge problem of unemployment and hunger. This budget is a brazen attack on the livelihood of rural people as there is a decrease of 33% in the budget for MGNREGA. This year it is only Rs 60,000 crore, while the revised estimate for 2023 was Rs 89,400 crore, up from the budget estimate of Rs 73,000 crore. Moreover the availability of working days under MNREGA was only 42 days, lowest in the recent times. The budgetary allocation ignores the findings of its own Economic Survey which establishes that demand under MNREGA was still higher than the pre-pandemic period pointing towards rural distress. Normally more than 20% of the MGNREGA budget goes towards clearing the arrears of the previous years. According to the estimates MGNREGA needs a minimum budget of Rs. 2.72 lakh crore to provide 100 days work.The allocation for Atmnirbhar Bharat RojgarYojna has also seen a cut from Rs 5758 crore to Rs. 2273 crore. Overall the allocation for rural employment has seen no increase from last year as the Government is refusing to accept the ground reality of high unemployment rate in rural India.
The budget will adversely affect food security as well as the budget for food subsidy has been reduced by 31% in comparison to last year. The budget for food subsidy was 2.87 lakh crore for the year 2022-23 which is reduced to 1.97 lakh crore in this year. It means a cut of Rs 90000 crore. The National Food Security Act’s budgetary allocations for decentralised purchase of foodgrains have been cut from 72,282.50 crores in RE (2022-23) to barely 59,793 crores in this year’s BE, a loss of about 12500 crores or 17%. The allocation for food subsidy to Food Corporation of India has been drastically cut from Rs. 1,45,920 crores to Rs.1,37,207 crores a cut of Rs.8,713 crores.The Public Distribution System and food security spending are clearly intended to be reduced. This will further worsen the condition of people facing hunger, especially as the performance of India in the Global Hunger Index which has placed it at 107 out of 121 countries in the list, with many of its neighbouring countries doing better than it.
Also the Government failed to provide a house to everyone by 2022 as it promised but spend crores on its propaganda. It seems it is not serious for providing housing as there is an increase of only 3% for the Prime Minister AwasYojna in caparison to revised FY 2022-23. Over all rural poor have been neglected by the budget as the allocation for Rural development has decreased from last year’s revised budget of Rs 181121.80 crore to 157545 crore in this budget.
The allocation for subsidy on petroleum which includes the Ujjwala scheme has been reduced by 75% which means people will has to face a price rise of petrol, diesel and cooking gas that will affect their food consumption sharply.
This budget fails to offer any solution to the crises in agriculture. The fertiliser subsidy is reduced by Rs 55000 crore which is 22%. It will further increase the input costs of farmers for various crops. The allocations for PradhanMantriSinchaiYojna have been cut from Rs. 12954 crores in 2022-23 BE to Rs. 10787 crores in the present budget. The allocation for RshtriyaKrishiVIkasYojna has been drastically cut from Rs. 10433 crores to Rs. 7150 crores and there is no increase in the allocations for the much hyped Pradhan mantra SammanNidhi. It means this budget will not help the crisis ridden agriculture sector which will also affect the agricultura;lworkets and other rural poor.
The total budget for Social Justice and empowerment has seen a meagre increase of Rs. 1159.51 crore from 11687.51 crore to 12847.02 crores. This is not sufficient to the meet the needs for ensuring any sort of social justice. The budget under the head of central sector schemes/projects is reduced from the revised budget of Rs. 1819.53 for year 2022-23 to Rs. 976 crore for this year. This includes various fellowships and scholarships for Dalits including the national fellowship for Scheduled Castes which has also seen a reduction of allocations from Rs 174 crore in 2022-23 to Rs. 163 crore this year. In total, the SC budget is just 3.5% compared to a population of 16%, while the ST budget is only 2.7% compared to a population of 8.6%.
The policy approach of the Central Government for health and education anti people as Rs. 9255 crores of the last year’s allocation for health remained unspent. Likewise, Rs. 4297 crores remained unspent in the education budget. Government is further depriving states of finance transfer to them as it gone down by Rs. 42000 crore in last two years which will have adverse impact on the welfare schemes run by the states themselves.
Despite the election year this budget does not address the basic needs of people. It seems that the continuing economic crises will have a bigger impact on the budget of the people of India as a whole, but the central Government has continued its pro rich neoliberal economic policies and has not proposed any hike in the corporate tax. The long awaited measures to check the huge economic inequality and disparity in India like wealth and inheritance tax do not find any place in the Budget. Overall this entire budget will further push the lives of people to greater uncertainty. The CWC of AIAWU calls upon its units to organise protests against this anti people and pro-corporate budget to reach the people at all levels, especially in village panchayats, localities, tehsils and districts.
A Vijayaraghavan (Sd/) B Venkat (Sd/)
President General Secretary
