HYDERABAD: The Bodhla family’s monthly income comes from five sources, the pension of the patriarch, and salaries of the three children and the daughter-in-law. Together they pull in about Rs 1.42 lakh. Their expenditure amounts to Rs 72,000, including Rs 22,000 as rent. Their cumulative savings are Rs 68,000 mostly in insurance and chit funds.
Given that three of the five earning members fall in the Rs 2.5-5 lakh income bracket, the family should benefit from the tax cut (from 10 per cent to 5 per cent) announced by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in the Budget 2017-18. But the family had been expecting the FM to raise the tax exemption limit to Rs 4 lakh and so was disappointed. In fact, Venkateshwarlu described it as a ‘play it safe’ Budget.
The only positive aspect of the Budget he found was the 10-year senior citizen pension scheme with an 8 per cent interest rate. He thinks it might interest pensioners like him.
The family wasn’t impressed by the digital initiatives in the Budget either. Venkateshwarlu said the Aadhar-based health cards for senior citizens left him indifferent.
Initiatives like the removal of all duties on devices used in cashless transactions (POS machines, fingerprint readers, etc) might help the merchant but not the consumer directly. As Divija said, “After all that digital talk, there was no mention of anything on the online security of our transactions.”
The housing sector is one that the Bodhlas have some interest in. The family had expected a reduction in interest rates for housing loans. But the FM left the matter of housing loan interest rates to banks, which have grown fat on demonetisation-accrued monies. Instead, he announced a number of measures to promote affordable housing. These too would not benefit consumers like the Bodhlas directly, but realtors who have been hit by demonetisation.
The matriarch Kusuma Kumari was the most supportive of Jaitley’s exertions. She said the focus on Mahila Sakthi Kendras and financial aid for pregnant women were encouraging. “I like the push for an amendment to the Drugs and Cosmetics Rules to ensure availability of drugs at reasonable prices,” she said.
The Bodhlas have their roots in farming back in their place of origin, Nizamabad. They know the difficulties of farmers, and so Jayasree took Jaitley’s intention to double farmer’s income in five years with a pinch of salt. “How would that happen? What’s been done to eliminate middlemen? The government should have considered waiving the loans of small farmers,” she said.
Jaitley did announce computerisation and integration of 63,000 primary agriculture credit societies with district central cooperative banks but what’s the direct benefit to farmers, Vamsikrishna asked.
In sum, the Bodhlas said the Budget seemed an effort to address hiccups thrown by demonetisation. It has measures for farmers and realtors who seem to have been most affected by demonetisation, with a tax sop for the lowest income tax slab.