The biggest fraud in the budget was with the middle class

Prabha Gupta July 23,2024

The biggest fraud in the budget was with the middle class. It was expected that the way the consumption rate is falling in the country, the government will try to put some money in the hands of the employed middle class so that they can go out to the market for shopping and demand increases. But nothing like this happened.

Last time the government had lured people with the new tax regime. This time people under the old tax regime were treated step-motherly. Whatever little relief was given was only for those under the new tax regime. That too almost negligible. A small exemption of Rs 25,000 in standard deduction and an illogical manipulation in the tax slab. This is such a change that very few people will benefit from. That too, no one will get more than Rs 17,000 maximum.

The issue of unemployment has been in the news for quite some time now. It was expected that the government would make some concrete efforts to solve this problem. The problem is that at this time there is no new investment in the country. New units are not being set up due to which new employment opportunities are not being created. Nothing was heard about this in the budget. Some lollipops were definitely heard like one month’s salary to those who get their first job and a monthly assistance of three thousand rupees to their employers. There is a plan to give apprenticeship to one crore youth but there is no assurance about what will happen to them after that.

But here a bigger question is that if there is nothing for the middle class, nothing for the youth, nothing for the farmers, nothing for the poor, nothing for inflation, then for whom is there anything in it. In other words, whose budget is this?

In such a situation, it is often said that the budget is for the rich and big industrialists. But is it really so? At least this cannot be said by looking at the reaction of the stock markets.

There is an English saying that the devil lies in the details. Maybe when we go into the details of the budget document, we will find out who is actually benefiting from it and who is not. The problem with the first budget of the third term of the Narendra Modi government is that no clear narrative is emerging from it. It is not clear where the government wants to take the economy, whom it wants to benefit and who it wants to harm.

From the packages given to Bihar and Andhra Pradesh, all that can be said is that this is a budget based on the compulsions of the coalition. Nothing else.