If the opposition parties at first labelled Nirmala Sitharaman’s proposals as a “Bihar-Andhra budget”, the finance minister’s post-budget clarifications have not convinced them otherwise. She opened the purse for the flood-hit Bihar with an array of announcements for highways and bridges, a 2,400-MW power plant, new airports, industrial corridors and sports facilities. For Andhra, the finance minister promised to fulfil commitments made under the AP Reorganisation Act and announced funds for irrigation and other development work.
Some states, already complaining of inadequate fund allocations and the possibility of imminent financial crises, are opposing the unequal budgetary allotments for obvious reasons. The DMK has announced demonstrations in district headquarters across Tamil Nadu to condemn the central government’s alleged “betrayal” of the state. It has seized on the budget as a political opportunity and is trying to popularise the hashtag #BJPBetraysTamilnadu.
The demand for central funds for the Chennai Metro, denied for the past three years, is likely to intensify. The chief ministers of at least four states have announced they will boycott Saturday’s NITI Aayog meeting to be chaired by the prime minister. Taking a step farther, M K Stalin warned Narendra Modi of “political isolation” if he continued to govern based on political likes and dislikes. Tamil leaders have noted that verses from the Kural, which the finance minister used to pepper her speeches with, were conspicuously missing from this year’s presentation.
This budget has acknowledged for the first time in over a decade that India is facing an employment crisis—it has proposed three incentive schemes with the clear aim of generating jobs across states. In February, the Tamil Nadu government announced in its budget a payroll subsidy for the first three years for jobs with a salary above Rs 1 lakh a month at the new global capability centres in the state. In addition, it announced a payroll subsidy for women, differently-abled and transgender employees for two years at new industrial units employing more than 500 individuals from the state. The focus on job creation is indeed a welcome one, whether from a state or the central government. But the Centre needs to look at a more equitable distribution of resources if it wants to alleviate the feeling of abandonment that several states are labouring under.
