[Marxistindia] Interim Budget 2024-25

[news from the cpi(m)]

February 1, 2024

Press Statement

 

The Polit Bureau of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) has issued the
following statement: 

 

Interim Budget 2024-25:

 

Modi `Development Model' - Enriching the Rich by Squeezing the Poor

 

Despite the tall claims made by the Finance Minister about the state of
India's economy, the interim Union Budget for 2024-25 reveals the grim
economic situation confronting India's working people and the vicious face
of the Modi government's conception of 'development' which is designed to
make the rich, richer and the poor, poorer. While the actual budget for
2024-25 will be the responsibility of the new Government and the Parliament
to be formed after the 2024 elections, the revised figures for 2023-24 tell
this story.

 

Though the revenue receipts in 2023-24 exceeded the budget estimates and
grew by 13.3 per cent compared to the previous year, Central Government
expenditures have been squeezed below budget estimates in order to reduce
the fiscal deficit. These expenditures have grown by only 7 per cent, less
than even the nominal growth of GDP, which is officially expected to be 8.9
per cent. This shortfall in expenditure has taken place despite the
establishment expenditure of the Government being higher than budgeted. The
axe has, therefore, fallen on expenditures on welfare schemes as well as on
capital expenditure. This will negatively impact future growth and economic
fundamentals.

 

Expenditures on several items like Agriculture & Allied Activities,
Education, Health, Social Welfare, and schemes like the PM Krishi Sinchai
Yojna and Umbrella Schemes for SCs, STs and other groups have been kept
below budgeted levels. The revised expenditures on PM Awas Yojna, PM Gram
Sadak Yojna, and PM Poshan are not only lower than budgeted, they are even
less than the expenditures in 2022-23. Schemes specifically for women and
children have also seen a reduction on both counts. This lower spending in
2023-24 than in 2022-23 has also encompassed heads that include Fertilizer
and Food Subsidies, MNREGA and Urban Development. Food subsidies have seen a
cut of Rs. 60470 crores between 2022-23 and 2023-24 while fertilizer
subsides have come down by Rs. 62445 crores. The expenditure on MNREGA in
2023-24 was Rs. 4806 crores less than in the previous year. Rural
Development expenditures and Transfers to States have remained virtually
stagnant, implying a cut in real terms.  The states are further squeezed as
the loans given for capital expenditures are of a much lower amount than the
loans given earlier in lieu of GST compensation.

 

The squeezing of central government expenditure and the relative
'improvement' of revenues has taken place in a background of extremely poor
growth. The estimated 'real' growth of 7.3 per cent in 2023-24 is pure
fiction, among other things, being based on the absurd proposition that the
inflation rate has come down to barely 1.6 per cent in 2023-24. This is
completely at odds with the inflation rates based on the Consumer Price
Index (CPI), which is around 6 per cent with food inflation of around 10 per
cent. That the RBI has been holding its repo rate at 6.5 per cent since
February 2023, in order to contain price rise reveals the real story of
inflation in India.

 

Despite the poor growth, the Government has given the benefit of tilting the
distribution of that slow growing income sharply in favour of big business,
the rich and wealthy. Revenues from corporate taxes and income taxes have
jumped up significantly compared to the pre-Covid period, not because rates
of taxation have gone up but because the share of the rich in total income
has increased. This is the K-Shaped Recovery, the 'development' in which the
working people are squeezed to  accept less while working more.

 

This interim budget totally exposes the hollowness of the bombastic claims
of the Modi propaganda machine of `real social justice' incorporating
working people as `partners in growth` etc.  This budget carries forward the
vicious `development model' of the Modi government which squeezes the
livelihood of the vast majority of India's working people to favour the
maximization of profits for the few.  

 

 

 

(Muralidharan)

For CPI(M) Central Committee office

 

 

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