By Abhijit Dasgupta

Economist Column Status Quo Maintained Ringside View Pay the piper and call the tune, who? Loud Thinking All in a name

The Yashwant Sinha Budget has proved to be a bag of hot air. Before the presentation of the Budget, the BJP government had promised that rural development would be accorded top priority; in the event, what seems likely is that the village folk will be the least privileged. The rural economy, once the import of this Budget sinks in, will prove be the worst hit. The allocations in irrigation and other agricultural work areas have been minimal and significantly, the funds reserved for these sectors in the previous Budget placed by the previous BJP government had more virtues and goodies for the villagers. Strangely, while facts and statistics are pointers to the contrary, Sinha has said that rural development has been uppermost in his list of priorities. Also, to make matters worse, the finance minister has quite cleverly made politics out of the Budget, leaving out the names of two former Prime Ministers, Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi, from the development programmes while that of an RSS leader, Deendayal Upadhyay, has been quite cleverly inserted in a new project. This is the game of names and Sinha seems to have made it quite apparent where his preferences were in the framing of the Budget. Nothing can be narrower than this brand of politics.

There are some other proposals too like those on irrigation and the kisan credit card schemes. Sinha has also scrapped the Jawahar Rojgar Yojana and the Indira Awas Yojana and the nomenclature has been changed, leaving out the names of these two leaders.. However, he has proposed the setting up of a project in the name of Upadhyay, pertaining to the organised handloom sector. It is strange that Sinha has chosen to make the Budget, on which the nation's fortunes depend, a vehicle for names of organisation leaders to whom he and his colleagues are unfortunately politically indebted.