Senior Congress leader and former union Finance Minister P Chidambaram today said that he was glad that the Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had copied certain ideas from the Congress Manifesto in its budget. “I wish she had adopted many more ideas from the Congress’ Manifesto”, he remarked.
Addressing a press conference at the AICC headquarters here today, Chidambaram said, the Finance Minister “has virtually adopted the ideas underlying our proposals on Employment-linked Incentive (ELI) scheme, the Apprenticeship Scheme with an allowance to the Apprentice, and on the abolition of the Angel Tax”.
He criticised the government’s response to the problem of unemployment, saying, “the response is too little and will have only little impact on the grave unemployment situation. The claim that the schemes announced by the Finance Minister will benefit 290 lakh persons is highly exaggerated”.
On a post on the social media platform ‘X’, Chidambaram wrote “I was pleased to hear that the FM will abolish the Angel Tax. Congress has pleaded for the abolition for many years and most recently in the Congress Manifesto on page 31.” However it is important to note that the UPA-2 government had introduced the angel tax in the 2012 budget.
He said, unemployment is the biggest challenge facing the country. “For a few dozen vacancies or a few thousand posts, millions of candidates apply and write an examination or appear for an interview”, he pointed out, while quoting the CMIE saying that the all India unemployment rate was 9.2 per cent.
Maintaining that inflation was the other major challenge, he pointed out, the WPI inflation was 3.4 per cent, CPI inflation was 5.1 per cent, and food inflation is 9.4 per cent.
Deploring the casual attitude of the government towards inflation, he said, there was nothing in the Budget Speech that would give confidence that the government will seriously tackle the issue. “The Economic Survey dismissed the issue of inflation in a few short sentences and the FM dismissed it in ten words in para 3 of her speech”, he pointed out.
Chidambaram said there was no response in the budget on the issue concerning education as NEET and the scandal-ridden National Testing Agency. He pointed out, several states have demanded that NEET should be scrapped and the states should be free to adopt their own methods of selecting candidates to various courses in medical education.
On declining expenditure on healthcare, he disclosed that it had declined to 0.28 per cent as a proportion of GDP and to 1.9 per cent as a proportion of total expenditure. He said, there was again no response from the government, as the finance minister did not speak about the grave deficiencies in public healthcare.
The former union Finance Minister said, in the last 6 years after adjusting for inflation, the wages had remained stagnant. “Between 2017-18 and 2022-23 the average monthly earnings of workers were: self-employed — Rs 12,800; casual/daily labour — Rs 7,400; and regular wage/ labour — Rs 19,750”, he said while demanding that the minimum wage should be fixed at Rs 400 per day for every kind of employment.
Chidambaram also raised the issue of legal guarantee on MSP to the farmers, which has not been mentioned in the budget.
He said, owing to massive unemployment, many students who had availed of Educational Loans have defaulted in payment of interest and/or repayment of the principal. There is a demand that the government should write off the unpaid balance of educational loans as a one-time measure of relief, he added.
He also referred to the Agnipath scheme saying the protest against it will continue till the old-time-honoured system of recruitment is not restored.
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