FAREWELL: Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman seems to be saying farewell to the poor and the deprived with a budget which aims to benefit rich industrialists and not aam aadmi!
—–In the name of farmers, youth, women, ST-SC!
HEAVEN help us in India! From the sound of it (and we keep hearing a lot of empty sound) our Great Leader is hell bent on either reducing our good old Bharatdesh to being either a China, or better still a Russia – and would fit into Russian President Putin’s shoes easily. A modern-day dictator in the making with all the trimmings of having arrived to wealth and power and so drunk on it! It is a funny if not so funny situation if you’re asking me, my dears, and I’m just a housewife of course exposing some of her may be shoddy ignorance and saying things not in the fitness of things!
It is typical of a government which has become so wealthy on GST collections and all kinds of other corruption-ridden wheeler dealing that it should think of itself first, second and last and in between throw a few fancy crumbs to the industry and khaas aadmi licking its boots religiously or reluctantly. I don’t know why Narendra Modi thinks we can be like America when 50 per cent of our people are worn down with the hardships of rural livelihoods and now this sarkar wants to thrust digital technology down our throats careless of where all the digital kachra-pati will end up! It’s like we only have solutions of full steam ahead without realization of where we’ll end up in the wilderness of crises after crises, torn apart in a maelstrom of all kinds of divides, rich, no so poor but getting to be poorer, rock bottom poor and on to the distractions of crime and sleaze mafia politics and tourism.
Look at the kind of politicians we have bred, most seem to have lost their groundings in what democratic politics is all about – giving the people a level playing field! In our current autocracy of little responsibility and no accountability we have our merry band of defecting politicians giving each other a level playing field to get rich, richer, richest…
AND I am sorry that it is Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman who has to whitewash the BJP government and its serious intentions to cut this country down to size in its own inflated ego represented in what Home Minister Amit Shah once called “jumla” The jumla politics of the BJP is a mega lie much like its mega development blitzkrieg of bridges, highways, expressways, airports, seaports, and of course grander personal and public quarters to live life in splendour surrounded by black cat security. Maybe smoothening out some systems has resulted in more funds for the government via GST which has replaced the old VAT – but it is at the cost of spiralling inflation, when I am paying Rs50 for a baingan (aubergine) in the market to make an agreeable bharta for lunch! A loaf of sliced factory bread is Rs35! Nowadays so many people live on bread and never mind that is just so much refined flour junk food to die and not to live. The poor are always damned.
BEING a media person and media persons not sleeping with the government of the day are having a terrible time currently – along with the aam aadmi of the country. There are fewer and fewer level playing fields and staying alive has become harder – especially if one is dedicated to showing the other side of the coin of development and progress which is ugly if you like to look at the larger picture unfolding at micro level. Hello, knock knock, does anyone care in a government on the roll, drunk on power, lies, scams and the good life up there in various illusionary and delusionary clouds of hypocrisy and autocracy?
If you’re asking me when a government is richer than its people and not just modestly rich but atrociously rolling rich in the hard earned public treasury of the country…no good can come out of it and we do not know where and when it will end. Don’t know about you, my dears, but I don’t want a government of mega statues, mega constructions, mega changing of street and road names and all this tongue-twisting names which make nonsense of sense of direction and historical contexts as seen through the eyes of …whoever is in power and in a mood to boost his or her ego.
Am I being too harsh in my judgement of this government? Think about it and don’t just think. See the answers blowing in the wind and read them well to make a difference for the better and not worse! On that note it’s avjo, poiteverem, selamat datang, au revoir, arrivedecci and vachun yeta here for now.
–Mme Butterfly
AAM AADMI BUDGET BLUES
Some pertinent quotes to take note and stock of!
(Compiled from here, there and everywhere including FB)
Vidyadhar Date, Mumbai
After making a mess of urban transport all these years, the rulers still have the gumption to talk of world class modern infrastructure and clichés like seamless, multimodel transport. They fool me to the bent of my head, as Hamlet said.
The complete disconnect with real needs of people is reflected in the latest budget showing utter disdain for the masses, inflicting the extremely costly metro rail project. No provision for basic needs of bus transport, for walking.
A hefty allocation of Rs19130 crore is made for Metro rail projects. Just shows the government is interested more in meeting the demands of the international Metro rail lobby, not to speak of the automobile lobby.
Dinesh Kumar:
When GST council meet every three months to deliberate on taxes the relevance of Union budget got diluted. GST is the largest revenue source for Union Budget. Without giving any account on how the fiscal deficit of previous year was made good and what segments or sectors took a cut from budget estimates the whole exercise is a total sham now. It’s only a meaning less exercise of grandiose announcement. A propaganda tool for a megalomaniac by a dimwit pawn who dreams she is queen.
Manzar Khan:
Budget 2022-23 no relief in income tax slabs or rate to individuals. Corporate tax reduced from 18% to 15%. Corporate surcharge reduced from 12%to 7%. Limit of corporate tax enhanced from 1 crore to 10 crore. So budget is “tax the poor and give to rich.” Now more donation will come through Corporate Electoral Bond to ruling party.
Shadab Mustafa:
At worst the inflation will go through the roof making the chain of economy heavier to move fast enough to keep the pace needed to overcome price rise with a risk of spiral and exponential effects on both sides, unless private sector finds momentum out of some magic wand through a market away from home.
Rajendra Kakodkar (Goa TMC vice-president):
This is a Pegasus spin budget! Narendra Modi promised us “Acche Din” almost eight years ago, but “Acche Din” today exist only for about 100 corporates and a handful of rich people! The Oxfam Report clearly states that during covid, while the rich more than doubled their wealth, the poor only grew poorer. Similarly, the middle class lost all their savings , the youth lost jobs. Migrant workers had to walk for miles because the PM implemented a lockdown almost overnight and failed to even provide transportation.
So, I really don’t know where are “Achhe Din?” When we see this budget we’ve to see this in the context of living through covid times – between January and March 2020 our GDP dipped by around 3%, the next fiscal year we lost another 7.3% of the GDP, so in the third year how are we expected to gain 9.2%?
The government is saying that the Sensex has increased, why then has the agricultural GDP not increased? Where is the Sensex of agriculture, farmers’ well-being, youth employment, MSME, and most importantly where is the Sensex of the middle class and poor? Does this government only cater to the rich? There has been an 85% reduction in household income as far as financial security is concerned. How does the government plan to recover this?
The BJP government is merely looking out for the interests of the bigger business houses and doesn’t care a damn about the poor or the middle class. It seems like all policy is meant to benefit the classic 1% while sacrificing the needs of the 99%. This is the same government which increased taxes for the diesel of the buses and rickshaws, while decreasing the taxes for aviation fuel. This is not a double-engine government, this is a double-engine disaster!
Jamdeva Dass:
Even if you’re listening nothing is going to change, the same bakwas by Modi as well as pickle Aunty Nimmy