I fear the hon. Member seems to have mistaken today’s topic as a Supplementary Demand for ‘Votes’ rather than for Grants. But I just wanted to say very clearly that behind the numbers, there are very serious issues. That is what, I would like to address today. My hon. colleague, Shri Veerappa Moily, has already painted a rather grim picture of the worrying condition of our economy, the declining growth, the decline in manufacturing, in exports, distress in the agricultural sector, no significant increase in employment – in fact, there are signs of decrease in many places – the impact of demonetization on employment and indeed the revenue losses in every State because of the botched implementation of the GST. So in these circumstances, the impact on our GDP growth has been serious and I think we have to take the previous speaker’s claims with considerable dozes of salt but that is not what I am going to spend my time on today. We are concerned about the fiscal deficit.

 That has already been addressed by a couple of speakers. The Government have said that they would hold it to 3.2 per cent of GDP but we know by October already they have spent 96.1 per cent of the full year target. So I do not know in the last couple of months how restraint they have been but there is some real question as to how and now with a new demand for Rs.66113 crore in the Supplementary Demand whether we are going to be able to retain that number. I think the Finance Minister would like to honestly come level with as to what exactly our new revised fiscal deficit target ought to be. In this context, I am also concerned that the Comptroller and Auditor General in his report has highlighted several flaws in the Union Government’s accounting procedures. In the financial year 2015-16, they have talked about an understatement of both the fiscal deficit and the revenue deficit in that year.

Given that and the apparent misclassification of revenue expenditure as capital expenditure and vice versa that the revenue deficit has been severely understated according to CAG by Rs.1583 crore in the fiscal year. In that case, of course, the fiscal deficit technically may already have been breached. I think it would be enlightening if the hon. Finance Minister would clarify the exact position on that. Madam Speaker, the reason that we have Supplementary Demands for Grants is because there are real needs in our country that the Government does not have the money to meet. So, I want to address some of these real needs that have astonishingly been omitted from the Supplementary Demands for Grants.

In my own Constituency, we have seen one of the great tragedies of our country in the course of this year, the horrors of cyclone Ockhi. The howling winds of 165 kilometres per hour tossed boats as well as fairly substantial fishing trawlers upside down in the seas. Seventy-one people have been confirmed dead and perhaps a 100 more have been missing. Each day the number goes up. That is only for Kerala. There are figures in Tamil Nadu. There are figures elsewhere. So in this time of absolute crises and suffering, many Kerala MPs today got together and went to see the Prime Minister. I also had the honour of seeing him yesterday to raise a very serious demand for a major compensation package. The Prime Minister came to my constituency and he spoke about standing shoulder to shoulder with the victims of cyclone Ockhi. But unfortunately, we have seen no significant announcement yet. So far the Kerala Government has made a request for Rs.7340 crore. Tamil Nadu Government has also submitted a request for Rs.9000 crore. The fact is that we have a need not only for an immediate relief measure but also slightly intermediate term measures such as skilling for fishermen, offering vocational training for alternative professions and so on and yet all we have got in the budget is Rs.153 crore from the Prime Minister’s National Relief Fund.

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This is so manifestly inadequate and I would request the hon. Finance Minister, when he replies to the debate, to move an amendment to his Supplementary Demands for Grants granting an additional financial package for the victims of cyclone Ockhi. This major tragedy requires nothing less than that sort of an attention. In addition, there are long-term training perhaps and after that like the Territorial Army you can train them one or two weeks a year. But they should be available to go out at a moment’s notice when their fellow fishermen are lost at sea. This may cost some money; it may cost a few thousand crores but it seems to me that given the repeated tragedy and sufferings that our people are going through that this should be an omission that the Finance Minister would wish to rectify in moving this Supplementary Demands for adoption. Madam, Speaker, I do wish to say that while there is much I want to say about cyclone Ockhi, we all have requested you for a further discussion in more detail and there is much to be done. So, I will turn to a few other topics that are also important that have been omitted. Many speakers have alluded to the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme. There is a modest request for Rs. 48000 crore in the Supplementary Demands for Grants. We will support that but that will only permit the Government to pay the wages that they should have paid which they have not paid. We already have demands from every State and there is a group called the MNREGA Sanghrash Morcha, a collection of MNREGA workers who say that wage payments over Rs. 3600 crore for work already done are pending in this country. So, in any case this money is not going to go very far. There are much greater needs. If you just add up requests from the State Governments, they have been totalling about Rs. 80,000 crore for MNREGA and not Rs. 48,000 crore that the Finance Minister has given. It seems to me that we really need to see a substantial increase, particularly given the economic distress that we have described. People are out of work; people in the rural areas need MNREGA in order to be able to survive. Similarly, we have all breathed the foul air of Delhi this winter. Where is the Government resource in this Supplementary Demands for improving our air quality? Where is the air quality warning system in this country? Where are the subsidies that may be required to prevent neighbouring States from burning stubble and ruining our air? Where is the initiative of the Government to say here is a genuine need, we are all chocking and suffering from lack of clean air in this city and indeed in many other parts of India and many of the urban parts of India and that here is an extra allocation? We would all support it. We will all support the Government. But unfortunately this has been completely neglected. I noticed, for example, the Ministry of Women and Child Development – the hon. Minister is sitting here -- has been given a sum of Rs. 3 lakh in this Supplementary Demands for Grants. We know that there is not enough money at the moment to give a rise to the Anganwadi workers; there is not enough money to set up the promised one-stop-rapecrisis centres that were announced initially and then have been forgotten. There was supposed to be one for every district. We do not have even two in the country or three in the country so far. Her Ministry needs money.

Where is the Finance Minister thinking of giving it in the Supplementary Demands for Grants? He is giving just Rs. 3 lakh. I might add here that he has given a sum of Rs. 2995 crore for power. Clearly we have a Government that understands power but does not understand the needs of women and children in our country. I might add that we also have the Ministry of External Affairs which has been given a modest sum of Rs. 3 lakh. Here is a Ministry that is responsible for our position and our posture in the world and all that they can afford to give from the Finance Ministry is Rs. 3 lakh. We have an embarrassing situation when our Prime Minister and Foreign Minister make pledges abroad that they are not able to fulfil because the money is not coming, or the money has been cut. (w3/1735/ru-pc)

We are in a situation where I was forced to say during the Budget debate that the biggest challenge facing our Ministry of External Affairs today is not Pakistan but it is the Ministry of Finance. I would plead for a little more generosity from the Ministry of Finance to stepchild Ministries like the Ministry of Women and Child Development and the Ministry of External Affairs which need the resources to do their job properly. That is missing from the Supplementary Demands for Grants. I want to ask the Minister for Finance briefly about the pension situation in the country. Many of our people who have served this country including Government institutions have been living on a bare subsistence  wage. There are people in their old age who are getting Rs.500 or Rs. 1000 a month. A classic case is the Reserve Bank of India pensioners.

 They were given a commitment that their pensions would be updated along with any subsequent wage revisions for serving employees. The promise was made and this attracted them to sign up with the RBI Scheme and now, it turns out that the Finance Ministry has refused to approve what is already a promise made to the RBI pensioners.

We know of people who are the custodians of our country’s currency coming to their MPs and crying that they cannot live on their pension that they are getting. I would urge the Finance Minister to address o all these issues. I may also allude to the comment of my colleague from the YSR Congress about the MPLADS. This is a popular demand. I hope the Finance Minister will consider it. Even if he does not give it to us right now, though I hope he will, let me at least request him to put a Supplementary Demands for Grants for the Pradhan Mantri’s Adarsh Gram Yojna.

The Aadarsh Gram Yojna has become a joke because not one paisa is attached to it. If you go and ask them as to where is the fund for adopting the village, we are all told there is no additional money and use the existing money. Then, why have a new label? As we have been saying repeatedly, this Government and its Budgets are really name changing and they are not game changing. They are not changing the game for our people at all. I recognize that there is a great deal more we can say.

For example, GST, has unfortunately affected everything from the issue of sanitary napkins for women which many women have already taken up with you, Madam Speaker. The disabled people are finding themselves paying outrageously high sums for essential things like cochlear implants, hearing aids, crutches, and wheel chairs.

I would request the Finance Minister to kindly waive GST on all these things and if necessary raise the Supplementary Demand some more. We will accept the breach of fiscal deficit if he tells us what it is. But we cannot accept a situation in which the weakest and most vulnerable of our society are not being able to afford the basic things they need to survive and coup in our country.