Former Finance Minister and Congress chief P Chidambaram addresses the media concerning the Union Interim Budget 2024 throughout a press convention, in New Delhi on Thursday.
| Photo Credit: ANI
India’s demographic dividend has been “destroyed” because the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance’s strategy to the financial system “is biased in favour of the rich”, Congress chief and former Finance Minister P. Chidambaram mentioned on Thursday, after the presentation of the Interim Union Budget in Parliament. He added that the celebration was not afraid of a white paper analysing the earlier Congress-led United Progressive Alliance authorities’s document on dealing with the financial system.
Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, in a video assertion, claimed that each “vision and accountability were missing” from the Interim Budget. “Any budget has two aspects: one, to provide a status report on the previous years, and the other is to provide a vision for the next year. Both of these are missing from this Interim Budget,” Mr. Kharge mentioned.
Addressing a press convention at celebration headquarters, Mr. Chidambaram slammed the Budget’s provisions for key sectors, together with the youth, girls, and farmers, in addition to the coverage of “minimum government and maximum governance”.
‘Rampant unemployment’
While Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had talked about youth, she didn’t acknowledge the “rampant” unemployment, mentioned the Congress chief, including that she had not talked about that over 30,000 farmers and agricultural labourers had died by suicide between 2020 and 2022, nor the low participation of girls in the labour drive.
“By deliberate neglect over the last 10 years, the government has destroyed the demographic dividend story and dashed the hopes of millions of youth and their families,” Mr. Chidambaram mentioned. “It is a government of the rich, by the rich and for the rich. The government is either ignorant or callous to the fact that the top 10% owns 60% of the nation’s wealth and earns 57% of the national income, and that income inequality has widened significantly in the last 10 years,” he added.
Per capita earnings vs GDP
Asked about India being described because the quickest rising financial system, the previous Finance Minister mentioned that the “fastest growing economy is not a badge of honour”.
“China’s GDP is five and a half times more than our GDP. If they grow at, say 3%, in order to match their annual growth, we have to grow at 15%… So don’t talk about GDP growth. Talk about the per capita income growth. If the GDP is growing at such a high rate, why is the per capita income growing at half that rate?” he requested.
High meals inflation
The Congress veteran mentioned that the Finance Minister had barely touched on the difficulty of inflation, even supposing meals inflation is at 7.7%, whereas the true wages for informal employees have stagnated for 4 years. “She spoke about free grain to 80 crore persons, but she did not speak about India’s rank in the Global Hunger Index or the widespread malnutrition among children leading to a high proportion of stunting and wasting,” he mentioned.
Mr. Chidambaram added that the “minimum government” coverage has, in actuality, “undermined federalism, starved State governments of funds and virtually reduced the third tier of governance — panchayats and municipalities — to ciphers”.