THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The budget, for Thomas Isaac, has always been an ideal platform to make a political statement, right from the rendering of the speech to the choice of the painting adorning the cover page, all serving as pointers to his Leftist leanings. With an eye on the impending assembly elections, Isaac came up with a slew of populist measures such as increase in welfare pensions, job creation and agrarian support schemes, among others.
If the angst against the Citizenship Amendment Act had fuelled his last budget — where he devoted eight paragraphs to attack the Modi government — this time, the ‘Dilli Chalo’ movement and the agrarian crisis predictably caught his imagination.
Accusing the Centre of using Covid as a cover to aggressively implement blind, neoliberal reforms, Isaac warned against the Centre’s arrogance. He, in turn, chose to roll out support schemes for the aggrieved protesters. In a scathing attack on the central fiscal policies, Isaac observed that states had to compensate for the Centre’s failure. What irked him the most was the CAG report against KIIFB — his pet project.
Alleging an organised move, Isaac accused vested interests of deliberately targeting treasury savings banks. Isaac’s over-enthusiasm with regard to rubber — a topic dear to his predecessor and the late Kerala Congress supremo K M Mani — could be associated with the entry of Jose K Mani into the Left fold.
Usually, interim budgets are the norm when governments are at the fag-end of their tenure. Isaac, however, not only presented a full budget, but also rolled out a developmental road-map for the next five years, in an obvious indication that the Left government is confident of continuing in power.
He made it a point to state that, compared to the last UDF government which shelled out Rs 9,011 crore as pension, the Left has distributed Rs 32,034 crore, with the number of social security pensioners witnessing a steep rise from 34 lakh in 2015-16 to 48.6 lakh as on date. The proposals that the School of Epidemiological Studies be named after social reformer Dr Palpu, fund allocations for the Chavara museum at Koonammavu and the installation of a Swami Vivekananda statue at Thrissur could, however, be slotted as measures to cater to certain social and religious sectors for electoral gains.