By Dr. Gyan Pathak
“Our Prime Minister firmly believes, we need to focus on four major castes,” said Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in her Interim Union Budget 2024-25 speech – Garib (poor), Mahilayen (women), Yuva (youth), and Annadata (Farmer). Their needs, their aspirations, and their welfare are our highest priority, she claimed. However, in reality, as the budget papers reveal, it was an utter lie, advocacy of the just opposite of what the government did, a mere reverse psychology. The reality is, they suffered the worst in the last 10 years of Modi rule, but on the eve of Lok Sabha General Election 2024, Government just needed to pacify them for their votes.
What does it mean by the ‘highest priority’? For unsuspecting electorate, it would mean the welfare of poor, women, youth, and farmer was accorded the most important priority by the Modi government. If it would have been true, how come it did not figure in the “Core of the Core Schemes”?
If we go by the budget, not the hypocritical speeches of political leaders of the ruling establishment, the “highest priority” core of the core central sector schemes are: 1. Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Programme, 2. National Social Assistance Programme, 3. Umbrella Programme for Development of Minorities, 4. Umbrella Programme for Development of Other Vulnerable Groups, 5. Umbrella Programme for Development of Scheduled Tribes, and 6. Umbrella Scheme for Development of Schedule Castes. There are 31 Core Schemes and 133 Major Central Sector Schemes. Nirmala Sitharaman, as being the Finance Minister of the Country, is supposed to know the fact of the “highest priority” and whoever tells otherwise than one knows is a lie.
Modi government can say only for the sake of logic that the “Core of the Core Schemes” also intended to help the poor, women, youth and farmer, but they would have to accept that there are other welfare programmes that specifically target these four groups, irrespective of their caste, creed, or religion, which are certainly accorded the “highest priority”.
The top Core of the Core Schemes of India is the MGNREGA scheme, but it should be noted that it was not brought by the Modi government. Rather the Modi government is obliged to implement it under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, 2005. It gave legal guarantee of a hundred days of wage employment in a year to adult members of a rural household on demand.
How the Modi government tried to sabotage the scheme is now well known, which included non-payment for months which the Supreme Court of India said amounted to slavery, since there were no jobs in the market and rural people had no option but to accept the injustice and work. Non-payment on one or the other pretext, such as implementing online attendance when connectivity itself was unreliable, not providing work if not registered online, low payment, sometimes even below the minimum wages, or at the minimum wage that breeds “working poverty” were intended to suppress the demand for work, which helped the government to reduce allocation for MGNREGA scheme. Another strategy of the Union Government was not to disburse money due to states for wages of MGNREGA workers, who had to go without wages for months.
It is worth recalling that NREGA Sangharsh Morcha had demanded a budget allocation of Rs2.72 lack crore to enable all card holders willing to work to get employment of 100 days, for the current year 2023-24, but the Union Government allocated mere Rs 60,000 crore, which could provide only 16.64 days of work in a year to all cardholders. Modi government’s ill-will towards the workforce was obvious when we recall the actual expenditure in the previous year 2022-23 at Rs 90806 crore.
Condition in the job market in India is at the frightening level with unemployment rate has been hovering between 7.2 to 10.1 per cent since October 2023 according to CMIE data based on 30 day moving average basis. We are compelled to quote this private data since the Government of India does not provide real time data on labour and unemployment, the motif is best known to them. One of the suspected reasons is that they just want to conceal the disturbing reality of the working class. No wonder, the Centre had to revise its budget upward for MGNREGA to Rs 86,000 crore in 2023-24(RE).
It is shocking that in the backdrop or surging demand for MGNREGA work Modi government has allotted only Rs 86,000 crore for 2024-25, at the level of expenditure in the current financial year 2023-24. Job market is becoming worse, as both the government and private data show. Quality of employment is worsening. In the rural areas, there has been large shift of workers back to agriculture, especially since 2018-19 much before the outbreak of COVID-19 and lockdowns in 2020
Currently agriculture supports 45.8 per cent of the workforce, and the large shift has already suppressed the rural wages. With high inflation and rising cost of living, real wages has suffered. As for agriculture and the farmers are concerned, government should have noted that farm sector growth has been set to decelerate to a seven year low to just 1.8 per cent in the current year. All these would further worsen the condition of rural workforce due to a fall in consumption level because of dwindling earning. Further the fall of consumption level would adversely impact the economy and thereby the labour market.
As for the urban poor or the workforce, there is not Central sector employment guarantee scheme, and the Union budget has frustrated them. Government has claimed decline in poverty level since 2013-14, by about 24 crore, but it should be surprising that the number of the poor entitled for free foodgrain or highly subsidised foodgrains remains at the same level at about 80 crore, as per PM Garib Kalyan Yojana. There is some fishy about the data, unless the rate of decline in poverty and the rate of poverty generation is the same. World Bank says that above 97 crore of people are not able to afford healthy food. One can just imagine the level of poverty, and sufferings of people, especially the poor ant the workforce.
As for the women , their share in the workforce is dismal. As per the PLFS report it was only 21.1 per cent in 2017-18 as per current weekly status basis, which rose to only 31.6 per cent. Unemployment scenario is far worse for youth of the country, which was higher at 23.22 per cent in 2022. Joblessness among those in the age group of 20 to 24 grew during October-December 2023 quarter to 44.49 per cent from 43.65 per cent from the previous quarter.
The Interim Budget 2024-25 does not give much desired relief to workforce, women, and youth. Giving them highest priority along with farmers claim has no substantiation in the budget papers and allocations in related schemes. (IPA Service)
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