The Union budget 2022-23 presented by Nirmala Sitharaman is Independent India’s 75th full budget.
It did away with a paper presentation as the finance minister read out the budgetory provisions from a tablet.
But the moot point is that, contrary to expectations, the government did not deem it necessary to make it a pampering exercise vis-a-vis poll-bound states, mainly Uttar Pradesh, which is crucial to BJP’s plans in the next LS polls slated for 2024, and Punjab.
Apart from a 2.3 lakh crore set aside for minimum support price for wheat and paddy procurement as direct payment for farmers, there isn’t much scope for insinuations that this is a pre-poll budget.
Politically, the BJP, on its part, does not see much scope for making any gains in Punjab, from where the farmers’ stir roiled the central government.
Though initially the Modi government was adamant on carrying out the farm laws, as time passed by and Assembly polls loomed, wisdom prevailed. The Centre repealed farm laws, raising hopes it will go all out to pamper disgruntled farmers.
In Western Uttar Pradesh, which accounts for 29, or nearly a third of the 80 Lok Sabha seats up for grabs in Uttar Pradesh, it was a BJP sweep in 2019, with it losing only Mainpuri, Firozabad and Badaun. Now, Mainpuri is a stronghold of Samajwadi Party, with a near 35 per cent Yadav voters. Mulayam Singh Yadav is the lawmaker from Mainpuri and his son Akhilesh is contesting the coming Assembly polls from Karhal seat.
A towering influence in Western UP, considered a Jat stronghold, was Chaudhary Charan Singh, who mrashalled farmers belonging to all communities. This legacy was passed on to late Ajit Singh and from him to a lesser extent to his son Jayant Chaudhary, but the mass base created by Charan Singh’s social engineering mix of Jats and Muslims had been withering away of late.
Though Jayant Chaudhary’s Rashtriya Lok Dal and its ties with SP would still be a formidable combo in western UP, the BJP would not bother much as it cruises through a mix of Hindutva and perceived development projects to retain or cling on to power, in UP, even if by a dwindled margin.
Moreover, next year’s Union Budget will almost certainly be the last full budget of the second Narendra Modi ggovernment ahead of the Lok Sabha polls slated for 2024.
So the thinking in the BJP camp would be to throw freebies and pump in placatory measures to woo voters in that budget.
This political calculation is certainly behind the budget’s non-pampering approach to the poll bound states.
Then comes the perceived crucial play of tax slabs. Now government employees are the most vociferous advocates of tax sops and goverments often woo them as potential vote banks.
As per the 7th pay commission, Uttar Pradesh accounts for 9.97 per cent of the central government employees including those in civilian and para military forces.
This is a miniscule number spread over 80 seats with over 15 crore voters for the BJP to pamper in an election which it hopes to win. It would rather have a larger dole-out to be kept in abeyance for the 2024 LS polls.
At the same time it is aiming to raise vast resources through taxing digital assets at a flat 30 per cent without banning them as expected. This could be fuelled to fund a populistic budget which can wean away voters in the next LS polls.
So the political logic powering the BJP in this so-called pre-poll budget actually makes sense.
Bottom-line: The budget speech had 17 references to farm, including its overlap with farmers and farming, the same as economy, while tax was mentioned 53 times. Jobs found a space only thrice, while ‘projects’ made the cut 24 times. Infra seems to have bagged the maximum attention from the finance minister -- 28 times and growth got 16 mentions.
