At a time when the entire world is grappling with the issue of food shortage and escalating food prices (especially owing to the drought that hit China), the least that was expected of our Finance Minister was a few bold steps to arrest the impending food crisis
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At a time when the entire world is grappling with the issue of food shortage and escalating food prices (especially owing to the drought that hit China), the least that was expected of our Finance Minister was a few bold steps to arrest the impending food crisis. Most governments across the world are already planning and drafting policies to tackle this issue.
West Asian countries are stocking up grains, while countries like Iraq have placed orders for 4,00,000 tonnes of wheat grain from the US. Following the trend, Jordan, Lebanon, Algeria, Tunisia and Saudi Arabia are exporting grains and Russia has even announced a complete ban on food grain exports.
In this light, whatever our Finance Minister announced in his Union Budget 2011-12 had no meat with respect to restoration of food grain stock; neither was any attempt made to address the expected inflation that may creep in within the next few months.
Also, the FM didn't announce any concrete plans for speedy implementation of those agriculture development initiatives that were announced in the previous budget! What he did instead, was to call for Lord Indra to shower his blessing to ensure that agriculture productivity is not hampered due to inadequate rainfall.
Moving from agriculture to the second issue that has been haunting the country all-year round was corruption and black money. It requires no statistical analysis to establish that this problem can only be addressed by a strong judiciary and judicial reforms. In this budget, as a sign of mere tokenism, Rs 1,500 crore has been allocated for the judiciary, which includes setting up of rural and e-courts. No announcements were made to provide courts with special powers or creating special courts to fasten the judicial process. Same goes for black money. No strategy to get back the money already stashed abroad has been announced.
Amidst this entire half-backed and gloomy policies announcement, what came as silver lining was the noble move of direct cash subsidy. Disbursing subsidy in the form of cash will not only reduce leakages in the chain but will also allow the subsidy to reach the right target audience. This should act as a strong foundation for a clean pilferage-free future.
And at the end, what came as a shocker was the FM's announcement of the creation of a new 'very-senior citizen' category to provide them with exemption and concessions.u00a0 Dear Pranab da, in a budget where you provisioned less than 0.5 per cent of the entire budget on health, how can you expect people to live till 80 to avail of those benefits?
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