One could say without a doubt that the Indian economy has been facing a myriad of crises in the recent past. Ranging from agrarian distress to unemployment, the economic sector of our society has been far from flourishing. Amidst this atmosphere of political turmoil, the Modi led government announced its much anticipated interim budget on the stipulated date of 1 of February 2019.
Considering this budget is a consequential factor towards the results of the approaching elections, there was a lot of speculation around what it would entail. The budget dealt with a plethora of prominent measures like providing assured income support to small and marginal farmers, a pension scheme for the unorganised sector workers with monthly income up to Rs. 15,000, an increased focus to keep the fiscal deficit of India to 3.4% of GDP and prominent tax cuts. Instead of focusing on the secondary and tertiary sectors of our economy, it is focused on the domestic rural and agrarian economy along with the chaotic low-income sector of the Indian population.
While these measures sound hopeful and have the potential to genuinely transform the Indian economy and bring it one step closer to being the five trillion dollar economy it can be, one must keep in mind the timing of the interim budget. As mentioned before, the budget is announced soon before the 2019 elections. This means that, essentially, the NDA government, in order to ensure their re election, would try and win over the population by exaggerating and glossing over the potential changes. Since the past four years, BJP has received a prominent degree of criticism due to the lack of concrete steps taken towards ensuring farmer and agrarian welfare. The results of the budget announcement are truly ambiguous and one cannot be certain that the BJP government will follow through with what could be momentous changes in our economy since they have an overarching political motive of winning the elections; however, studying the budget out of context, it has the potential to strengthen our economy greatly.
