Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s Budget makes virtually no mention of India’s social sector — health, education, nutrition and employment. This is despite some glaring facts. While the government has tightened its belt, rural India has plunged into indebtedness. Even before the pandemic, every second agricultural household was mired in debt as per the 2019 NSSO Situation Assessment Survey. Further, to cope with Covid-19 and continue to feed families, in 2020-21, household debt is estimated to have increased to 37 per cent of India’s GDP (SBI report). One of every three Indian children is stunted due to malnutrition, as per the latest National Family Health Survey. The recent Oxfam report on inequality highlights that while incomes of 84 per cent of households declined in 2020 and 46 million Indians fell into extreme poverty, the number of Indian billionaires increased from 102 to 142. In a deeply unequal country, the richest 10 per cent of Indians now own nearly half the country’s wealth. The World Bank estimates that India will contribute to nearly half the additional poor globally. In the 2020 Hunger Watch Survey, too, one of every three homes skipped meals. The fine-print of the Budget indicates gross omissions in the face of these realities and disparities. The Budget for school midday meals (newly re-named PM POSHAN) has declined by 11 per cent. For pre-school children, too, there has been only a negligible increase in the newly renamed POSHAN 2.0. It is also unclear how 2,00,000 anganwadis will be “upgraded” with “better infrastructure and audio-visual aids, powered by clean energy” with only ₹10,000 additionally budgeted for each. In the previous 2021-22 Budget, 5 kilograms of free foodgrain were provided to 80 crore Indians under the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana. But the food subsidy budget has now been reduced by a third, which clearly indicates that despite 870 lakh tonnes of foodgrains overflowing in granaries, the government does not intend to extend the PMGKAY or universalise the public distribution system to alleviate hunger. Despite sustained farmer protests, the overall agricultural budget has also remained stagnant.
Education and health
With schools shut for nearly two years, there is also an acute educational crisis nationwide. The 2021 ASER phone-based survey clearly indicates that across India there is a shift from private to government schools. However, despite the acute digital divide, the Budget has only made a new allocation for ‘one class-one TV channel’ to address the deep learning loss. Even as India is in the midst of the third wave of the pandemic, the healthcare budget has also remained stagnant. The focus on mental health, too, is only restricted to tele-counselling. Instead, puzzlingly the Budget speech emphasised the creation of digital health registries rather than tangible investments in prevention and treatment of diseases. For a country which spends less than 2 per cent of GDP on healthcare, universal healthcare seems a distant dream.
Employment and taxes
Decline in family incomes, soaring debt and rising inflation have shrunk rural demand. Even the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) had recommended expanding NREGA to support the poor and revive consumer demand. The pandemic demand for NREGA has soared, but last year 21 States were short of funds in the first half. Despite this, the Finance Minister has again substantially decreased the NREGA budget to ₹73,000 crore from the actual expenditure of ₹1,11,170 crore in 2021-22. To generate sustainable revenues to fund social sector expenditure, Jan Sarokar, an umbrella network of social movements, has recommended that at least the wealthiest 1 per cent of Indians pay a 2 per cent wealth tax and 33 per cent inheritance tax. The Budget leaves poor Indians to fend for themselves. As the ancient Greek biographer Plutarch has remarked, “An imbalance between the rich and the poor is oldest and most fatal ailments of all republics.” The writer is a social activist with the Right to Food Campaign