State Secretary of the Communist Party of India Mutharasan has said that Tamil Nadu has been neglected in all respects in the financial status report.
In this regard, in a statement issued by Mutharasan, “Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has presented the financial report for the seventh time in the Indian Parliament. Other than the fact that the same minister has presented the most number of consecutive financial statements, there are no achievements in this. Although this financial report is said to focus on the poor, women and youth farmers, corporates have benefited greatly by exploiting these sectors.
One hundred and nine new varieties of cereals for high yield. It is paradoxical to claim that oilseeds are being developed and promote organic agriculture. Already 3 Agriculture Acts have been brought to corporatize agriculture. Now the same attempt is being made again in the name of cluster. There is a lot of talk in the fiscal position report about employment and skill development.
But saying that the government will pay the first month’s salary to the newly recruited workers and that the government will pay their provident fund contribution will benefit the employers more than the workers. And the financial statement does not speak about the possibility of making these jobs permanent.
Government funds have been pumped in to appease the United Janata Dal and Telugu Desam Party, which is holding a minority government. The BJP government, which had already refused to grant separate status to Andhra Pradesh, is now providing the funds they asked for. The reality is that none of the schemes already mentioned in the name of protecting MSMEs have reached them. Even now the same set of words is reproduced. There is no concrete plan to create and improve financial resources for the lakhs of MSMEs that have been crippled by demonetisation and the new GST.
Instead of saving these small and medium enterprises from the strong attack of corporates, it is an empty text to say that they are going to prepare them for global competition. It has been announced that they are going to build houses at a cost of 10 lakh crore rupees under the Prime Minister’s Housing Scheme. But the Union Government’s contribution in this is only 2.2 lakh crore rupees. The remaining Rs 7.8 lakh crore falls on the head of state governments. And although it is said that the bond registration amount will be reduced, it is a relief to the general public, but all the losses will be to the state governments. Although the budget talks about increasing nuclear and thermal power generation, it is aimed at bringing these into private hands.
Only now has Nirmala Sitharaman discovered that states like Bihar and Assam are affected by floods from outside the country. The Union government is also allocating more funds for reconstruction and rehabilitation efforts in the flood-affected states of Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Sikkim. But he did not hold his breath about the flood-affected southern states including Tamil Nadu. Pilgrimage programs to Hindu, Buddhist and Jain temples including Vishnu Bodhi, Mahabodhi, Kashi Vishwanathar Temple are being carried out to promote tourism.
Similarly, tourism projects have been given to the state of Odisha, which has recently been won by the BJP. At the same time there is no plan for tourism development in Tamil Nadu which has beautiful beaches, western mountain ranges, summer resorts, more temples and heritage symbols than any other state. Not only this, Tamil Nadu has been neglected in all aspects, which is highly condemnable.
In the form of economic reforms, the Justice Status Report talks about making land, labor and capital more easily available to big capitalists. Corporate offerings continue on “Simplifying Doing Business”. The BJP government continues its economic journey in a manner hostile to the workers, farmers and the public by taking over land at a low price and giving it to the capitalists, taking away the rights of the workers and turning them into wages and giving them a way to leave their jobs whenever they want, waiving taxes and waiving bank loans and giving public money to the capitalists as capital.
Although it pretends to give something to the workers, it has no substance other than handing out more manual labor and migrant workers with e-shrum cards that do not provide much benefit. Despite the clamor for the old pension scheme, the financial report categorically denied that it was unacceptable. Instead, they are empty-handedly promising that the new pension scheme will happily provide some guarantees and that a committee is studying it. Why would a government come up with a NBS Vatsalya scheme where a child can be saved from birth and parents can save money for the child’s pension at the age of 60?
People who were earning up to Rs 20,800 per month have no income tax, now they have increased it to no tax up to Rs 25,000. This concession that has passed over time is not going to help much. The BJP government has changed the existing system to pay income tax and brought a new system. The wage earners were reluctant to switch to the new system as they felt that many benefits of the old system would be lost. This financial statement seeks to draw them into the new system. There is no plan to fulfill the old promise of employment to two crore people per year.
The union government has not considered even one of the demands put together by all the central trade unions about raising the minimum resource price agreed upon by the union government during the farmers’ struggle, or about the mechanism by which the farmer can achieve 150 percent of the agricultural cost. Although India ranks fifth in the world in terms of GDP, it ranks 126th in terms of GDP per capita. India is one of the world’s poorest countries and one of the 15 most starving countries in the world. The economic policy of the BJP government is such that only ten percent of the people get more assets and higher income.
While on one hand wealth accumulation is at its peak, on the other hand more than 50 crore people are toiling in extreme poverty. No attempt has been made in this financial statement to alter this to any extent. This is a financial report prepared to cool down the ruling parties of Bihar and Andhra states in order to sustain his government, to attract votes for his party in the states where assembly elections are coming soon, and as usual to help corporates and big business groups. The ordinary people who voted to come to power even for the third time have understood this deception,” he said.
