New Delhi: Facing an uphill task in the five poll-bound states, which are being billed as semifinal in the run up to the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in his Budget proposal for 2017-18 appears to have given the BJP a deep anchor to steady its ship in the turbulent electoral waters. By doubling the Mudra lending to Rs 2.44 lakh crore and enhancing the farm credit to Rs 10 lakh crore, besides proposing a historic high of Rs 48000 crore from the MGNREGA and committing to make 50,000 Gram Sabhas free of poverty by 2019, Jaitley has sought to give a strong script to the BJP to drum up support for the party in the poll-bound states.
The BJP has already been showcasing the success of the Mudra scheme for the unbanked people in the poll-bound states in a big way. In the last Budget, Jaitley had provided for Rs 1.22 lakh crore for the Mudra lending. “I am doubling the Mudra lending to Rs 2.44 lakh crore in the 2017-18 Budget. The priority in the lending will be given to Dalits, women, and backward communities,” said Jaitley during his Budget speech.
With the stakes high in the poll-bound Uttar Pradesh where the rural areas apparently hold the key to the fortune of the winning political outfit, Jaitley also sought to build a robust rural and agrarian template for the BJP. By stating that the government would target 50,000 Gram Sabhas to become free of poverty along with an enhanced allocation of Rs 48,000 crore, which is an all-time high, for the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), Jaitley has made a strong case for the BJP to build a support base in the rural areas of UP.
With UP largely being an agrarian state, Jaitley's proposal to enhance the farm credit to Rs 10 lakh crore from Rs 8.5 lakh crore last year along with broadening of the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojna (doubling the coverage), besides a dedicated corpus of Rs 5000 crore for the micro-irrigation facilities appear to give the NDA a sound footing amongst the farming community, which had apparently been hit hard by the decision of demonetization. BY proposing the integration of e-NAM (National Agricultural Market) with the commodity market, the Finance Minister appears to have sought to find better prices for the farmers for their produces. The Finance Minister also proposed setting up of 688 minilabs for testing of soil, which is as part of the drive of the Narendra Modi government to cut down the input cost of the farmers, besides avoiding the excessive usage of the fertilisers.
The Budget for 2017-18 along with the BJP manifesto for UP in which the party has promised interest-free crop loans to the farmers are being seen by the party leaders as “good script to turn around the apparent slide in the Hindi heartland”.