Budget 2010-2011

24th February, Much awaited day for many but, normal day for most Indians.
And here comes another budget day. A survey done a few years ago revealed that 17% of Indians do not follow the budget at all and another 30% are barely interested in it(Source: Times of India).

       That means a large group of Indian population has nothing to do with budget. For me if somebody would ask, what budget day is? My answer would be:It's little tinkering, shuffling and moving of taxation rates here and there to make citizens fool. Revisions in price of some items, or rather I can say that it has lots of accounting stuffs that draws little or no interest from my side (as I have enough money for not diving deep in details of prices of Rice, Sugar and other basic needed commodities).

 

 
      But but for no reason I followed the BUDGET2010 to the level I could. Here are my conclusions:
There is no reason to build up so much of drama around the finance minister's(Currently Pranab Mukhaerjee is 28th FM list: List ) presentation in Parliament and then minutely dissecting it. Let's treat it as an annual financial statement by the government and nothing more. What I felt wrong is that the budget is a holdover from the days of a planned economy and the License RAJ(which is obsolete but still followed in India for no reason :( ). It makes a little sense in a rapidly changing and globalising world. Instead my suggestion is Budget could be put on Internet and it's content widely distributed and circulated. This could be followed by a debate in Parliament with Representatives of Ideas, controversies, Volunteers etc. That could make a better sense.

      This year the budget was the shuffling of pricing among Direct Taxes, Proposals(which Indian Govt fails to achieve80% of time) and Indirect Taxes. Every Year if we look for the Plans it's Universal Set of alllll problems and if followed, it may eradicate poverty, illetracy and corruption from the root. But WE fail every year and again look for the Budget Box session and glibtalk. Well Budget is in favour of Rural People(as always :)). Some Points of our interests

• Tax exemption rates much more minimised for each earning group belt.
• Central Excise raised 8% to 10% on all non-petroleum prducts and 1 Rs. raised on diesel and petrol. Similary for crude petroleum, Diesel and Refined Products has their Basic duties restored to 5%, 7.5% and 10%.
• Raised excise duty on non-smoking tobacco,snuff,chewing tobacco etc.
• Custom duty raised by around 50% on Valuable metals (Platinum, Gold, Silver).
• Specified inputs for orthopaedic implants exempted from import duty.
• Toy Ballons and other low budget toys fully exempted from Central Excise Duty.
• Transportation by roads of cereals, pulses, vegetables exempted from service tax.
• Excise duty on large cars, SUVs and CUVs raised by 22%.

 Some Promises in Proposals are:

• Rs. 40,100 crore for Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme.
• Rs 48,000 crore allocated for rural infrastructure programmers under Bharat Nirman.
• Unit cost under Indira Awas Yojna up to Rs. 45,000  in the plains and to Rs. 48,500
• Allocation for urban development up by more than 75% from Rs. 3060 crore to Rs. 5400 crore. Similarly for Housing & Urban Poverty  Alleviation raised.
• Housing loans scheme subvention for 1% till 31st march 2011.
• Raised fund in Plans for Schools education, Women and Child development, Social Security, Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojna, Mahila Kisan Sashaktikaran Pariyojna to meet needs of women farmers. Social Justice and Empowerment.
• Rs. 16,500 Crore provided to ensure that public sector banks attain a minimum 8% Tier-I capital by March 31st 2011.

All this sounds really encouraging. But I went through the proposals and plans of all Budgets summit, I found all year's plan are flooded with such proposals. All this is glib talk and lame things. Rural Areas are still far away to see electric bulbs, Roads and Bridges not constructed, Farmers still committing suicide, Child Marriages still in full practice, Cases of parading women naked, beaten and forced to eat human excrement by villagers after branding them as witches are still found in monthly basis. THEN WHERE IS THE GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT??

       All Roads and Bridges are constructed in Files, All FIRs and Police case are solved in Papers, All Village got electric connections in Files (There are cases when a Collector came to village to inspect conditions of progress,  few lights are shown to him glowing with Battery in the back end and an arranged buffet for him with colorful lights operated with battery or with Tractor's Generation. Is that Collector fool ?? No... All this people are part of the system and they are imbecile enough to ignore everything for their personal favour,  profit, upper management pressures).

      Owls cannot see in day, you know why ?? because Owls are blinded by light.. We are just another Owl riding bikes, bowling, eating pizza and burgers, spending uselessly on chocolates, dresses and gifts like anything. We never care about what's the living status of our watchmen, autorickshaw driver and other people who provide us the basic things. If we are ignoring all this today, this all will revoke to us one day.

     While browsing through wikipedia for the history of Budget I found that like many of India's parliamentary traditions, the annual budget is also borrowed from British. Traditions like the Budget Box(Red Leather briefcase in case of British but, Cherry red in India :) where the budget speech is carried to the House of Common that is Parliament) is exact copy from the British parliament (Well, it makes little sense here.). But the irony is that while the budget has become a fairly routine event in Britain, we still like to go bananas(following like crazy) over the event of Budget year after year. If the pomp show surrounding the Budget will be diminished or removed, not too many people would complain. The only losers would be Finance Minister and a few Politics Pundits who enjoy their moment in the sun once a year.

Note: One Request, if this publish makes little sense to your understanding then, please find 2 mins to comment. Good/Average/Bad, Agree/Disagree, Improvement area, free suggestions etc.