Sir, what does the aam admi look for in a Budget? At the personal level, he would obviously like more income, lower costs. At  the broader level, he would like policies that will increase his job opportunities, reduce prices he has to pay for daily essentials and widen his life prospects.

          What does the economist look for? At the macro level, he would look for policies that will create growth and jobs, improve exports, promote economic stability, tackle inflation and still help the Government keep its fiscal deficit under control.

          What does the politician look for? He looks for sops that he can sell to the voters. This Budget, Mr. Chairman, has much to disappoint the aam aadmi, frustrate the economist and prove a mixed bag for the politician.

          Any budget must address five issues, One, fiscal consolidation, that is, the policy aimed at reducing the fiscal deficit. Two,  job creation, usually through boosting manufacturing. Three, increasing savings in order to boost investments. Four, inflation control in our country, this  is obvious. And  five, improving investor sentiment, both domestic and foreign, so we can promote growth.  I am sorry to say, Mr. Chairman, this Budget falls short on all these five criteria. 

          Yes, it is a political Budget.  The Government has at last discovered the virtues of attending to the needs of the agriculture sector and the rural poor.  But this has much more to do with the upcoming State elections than with the coherent economic vision.  This Budget falls between two stools, between sending reassuring signals to the rating agencies abroad and sending even more reassuring signals to the voters at home.  In other words, it tries to satisfy both Modi’s interest and Moody’s interest.  Nowhere is this contradiction more apparent than in the alarming unreality of some of the Government’s numbers, specially a 3.5 per cent fiscal deficit, when it is very clear from the Budget that there will be unplanned expenses and unrealised revenue. 

          The Finance Minister knows that he must fund expenditure for rural development, farmer welfare, housing for all, sanitation projects, grant of ‘one rank one pension’, recapitalisation of stressed public sector banks. He also has to eventually accommodate expenditure of 0.65 per cent of GDP for the Seventh Pay Commission recommendations, and a further investment of about 2 per cent of GDP to fund massive infrastructure projects.  What about the additional expenses for implementing the National Food Security Act?  This exhaustive shopping list is certainly going to oblige the NDA Government to breach Mr. Jaitley’s commitments of a fiscal deficit of 3.5 per cent.

          More so, because the tax collection targets are going to be very difficult to meet. The  revenue expenditure balance-sheet is not encouraging.  In addition, the disinvestment targets mentioned by the Minister in previous budgets have been completely missed by the Government.  But the Finance Minister is still optimistic because he has budgeted a 12.74 per cent increase in the net tax revenue collections for next year.  These rely heavily on indirect taxation, which already grew by 34.8 per cent last year, and they rely on multiple hikes on excise duties even as oil prices fall which brings, of course, unpleasant news for every middle class and lower middle class tax-paying citizen. 

          Any economist will tell you that indirect taxes are essentially regressive.  They hurt the poor more because the poor and the rich alike, both have to pay more for the same essential services.  A rich man is buying petrol for his stretch limousine or a poor man is buying petrol for his scooter; they are paying the same price.  So the Government has been meeting its fiscal deficit targets on the backs of the aam aadmi instead of boosting the real incomes of the poor by cutting indirect taxes.

          So oil prices drop; excise duties go up.  The aam aadmi in India gets no benefits while people in the rest of the world are saving at the petrol pump.  No wonder this fiscal year, the Centre was able to rake in Rs. 54,334 crore over the estimates for the Union excise duties and it has also increased its estimate for the year by 27 per cent to Rs. 3.18 lakh crore.

On top of that, the recent Paris Commitments create an onus to encourage sustainable and eco-friendly consumption habits and yet the Minister goes and levies one per cent Infrastructure Cess on small LPG and CNG cars.  That defeats the very objective of the commitment that his colleague has made in Paris.  The tax exemption on profits for start-ups is a far cry from the much needed rationalisation of a tax on angel investors.  In fact, because more start ups are there, let us face it, most start ups  do not, actually, book profits in the first few years of their operation.  So, telling him you do not have to pay tax on profits makes no difference because they do not have profits anywhere in the beginning.  What you really need is to give angel investments, which are the bread and butter of these cash starved start-ups, give them a removal of the angel tax which would have, actually, strengthen the start-up eco system. 

That is not all, Mr. Chairman.  Corporates were hoping for tax cuts, but that never happened.  Where is the proposed time table for a roll out of the Direct Taxes Code? 

If a middle class of four in Delhi wants to go to a restaurant, they would have to incur the following expanses – five litres of petrol on an average, given our distances and traffic, at Rs. 56.61 per litre which would cost them Rs. 283 and which includes a tax of Rs. 190.  It is 204 per cent more than the global oil price.

          Then, let us give them a nominal restaurant bill of just Rs. 1000, which would attract a tax of Rs. 303.50 paise – Service Charge of 10 per cent, VAT of 12.5 per cent, Service Tax of 14 per cent plus Swachh Bharat Cess of 0.5 per cent plus Krishi Kalyan Cess of 0.5 per cent.  That all collectively levied on 40 per cent of the bill.  In other words, for this middle class family to go to a restaurant in Delhi, a person would have to earn Rs. 2240 and, of course, pay a tax of Rs. 660 on the income. Therefore, from that income of Rs. 2240, this person would spend Rs. 1087 on the actual value of the goods consumed and Rs. 1153 or 51.5 per cent, as tax.  In other words, your tax costs more than your dinner  and even your transport. This increase has really troubled the middle class in our country.  I must also say  a word about the increase in power prices.  Power prices have also impacted the budget of every family.  In fact, in many cases the electricity bill has doubled, thanks to the Budget announcements of our Government. 

In a bid to achieve its ambitious GDP growth figures, the Government has, therefore, burdened the Aam Admi.  That is my principal point here. But, has the Finance Minister done enough to stimulate growth in the coming year and beyond?  I am afraid, not.  It does seem that he has made a conscious decision to tone down previous years, growth aspirations.  Given the sluggish environment of investment, there is a need for both enhancing public investment in social and physical infrastructure and also undertaking innovative measures to stimulate private investment.  It is because private investment is largely not happening.  That simply is not in the Budget on either count.

          As per the Government’s optimistic estimates of growth, I must point out, Mr. Chairman that normally growth implies that production, profits, wages, jobs and exports are all growing.  That is what we understand by growth.  Here we have a peculiar situation where none of these elements is growing, production is not growing, profits are not growing, wages are not growing, jobs are not growing and exports are not growing. 

          So, how does still the Government project a seven per cent GDP growth?  At present, the external debt of the country is already at all time high of 31.7 lakh crore, and the Finance Minister carefully did not mention the number in his presentation.  Growth  has slowed in all the key sectors in 2015-16 in manufacturing, in construction, in mining, in industries, in electricity and in agriculture. The index of industrial production is in the red , -1.3 per cent in December.  This is as compared with 3.6 per cent in December, 2014.

          Corporate sector profitability has been weak.  The proportion of corporate debt that is owned by stressed companies has increased to 41 per cent this year from 35 per cent in 2014.  So, I only hope, Jaitley sahab that unlike the black money estimates floated by the ruling party, you are not getting your economics from Baba Ramdev. The black into white scheme of the Government has identified only Rs.3,770 crore of undisclosed foreign assets, which boils down to 30 rupees for every Indian instead of Rs.15 lakh per person promised to us.  But, of course, we have been informed by the senior leader of the BJP that this is only a jumla and we should not take this figure too seriously. 

          Now, whatever it may be  the tough truth is that the official GDP data may well be accurate but it does not reflect the actual state of the Indian economy today.  What is worse is what lies ahead, which is that the battle is with the volatile global economy, declining exports, possible increase in oil prices from the anticipated 35 dollars a barrel at which the Budget has been pitched; the risk of a poor monsoon and static domestic consumption.

          Let us face it  the monetary institutions like the World Bank and the IMF, have  already lowered their estimates for global economic growth, and they have to take into account the slowdown in China, the declining in oil and commodity prices, on-going geo-political tensions in many Regions, particularly the Middle East which will affect trade to divert funds from infrastructure and development needs. So, for us, in India, it is a long established principle that one percentage point decrease in global economic growth normally translates into a 0.42 per cent decrease in our domestic growth.  This is a rough rule of thumb.  I do not know  if the Minister has a different yardstick.  But we are facing, therefore, some of the backwash from global decline in growth. On top of that, there is a decline in exports.  For two consecutive years, our exports have gone down.  Now, what is curious, Sir, is that world trade has actually gone up by a modest three per cent. But how can we profit from that increase in world trade when our own exports have actually shown a negative growth?  So, clearly, global markets are not as ready for Indian goods and services as we would like, to believe. We  have the ‘Make in India’ slogan going around for a while but it looks like that if we do not increase domestic consumption, we are not going to push up our growth rates because foreigners are not buying our goods.

          Now, obviously, the monsoon is something that we are all praying for, that it will be good for the farmers.  But the truth of the matter is again that the El Nino effect last year took away 0.7 percentage points from our GDP growth, and this year the Government in its optimism has clearly overlooked the warnings of the Inter Governmental Panel on Climate Change about the adverse and continuing impact of climate change on rainfall.  I certainly wish our Finance Minister luck in reversing the climate change forecast within a few months and inducing a favourable monsoon to improve the rural economy. But what happens if it does not happen?  What happens if we do not have a favourable monsoon; where do these numbers go? 

But to return to the Government’s numbers, on disinvestment the Government announced last year a target of Rs.69,500 crore but it raised only Rs.25,312 crore.  Okay, it was a massive shortfall. Despite this dose of coldwater from the markets, the Government has again announced an ambitious target of Rs.56,000 crore for the fiscal year 2016-17.  Is this credible or is it an example of what one might call, with this very faith-based Government, one might call faith-based budgeting?

Now, there are some positives, Sir.  I do not want to stand here and only say negatives about the Budget.  We welcome the increased allocations for Swachh Bharat. I may point out that so far the allocations of Swachh Bharat have been below the levels of the UPA sanitation budgets.   But now, it has gone up.  About the roads and highways, we know.  About MNREGA, the Finance Minister said that it was the highest ever allocation.  It is not.  It is still below the 2010-11 levels of the MNREGA Budget of the UPA.

THE MINISTER OF FINANCE, MINISTER OF CORPORATE  AFFAIRS AND MINISTER OF INFORMATION  AND BROADCASTING (SHRI ARUN JAITLEY): In the UPA, the system of accounting was: Budget for Rs. 45,000 crore and  spend  Rs. 29,000 crore… (Interruptions)

1. SHASHI THAROOR: What was actually spent, we will take the comparison.  Right now,  we are comparing Budget to Budget.

SHRI ARUN JAITLEY:  Current year, we have spent much higher.  This is the first Budget after a decade where the Revised Estimates are higher than the Budget Estimates.

1. SHASHI THAROOR: So, when we see you actually  spending that money, we will accept your point with pleasure, Mr. Finance Minister.

          Gram Panchayat should get more money. We have been calling for that for years; we are pleased. LPG for cooking, for poor rural women is a very important point.  No one, who has been to a village hut and seen these women struggling, with a smoke from choolah, from wood fires, coal fires, cow dung fires, can  possibly disagree with the Finance Minister.  LPG is wonderful.  I only hope that the Government’s policy will  leave these poor women and their families enough money so they can have something to cook with the LPG.  That is the big anxiety we have. I also hope, of course, that the Government will find the money to fulfill all the promises that I have just summarized.

          Certainly, the urban component of the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan did not exist in the last year’s Budget.  It will strengthen, I believe, drainage and sewerage systems of the cities.  I am only sorry that it took the Chennai floods to clear the haze of the eyes of the  Government and put this very valuable new idea in.

          And, as a Member of the previous Government, I could not help feeling vindicated to see the Government embracing UPA ideas that it has earlier bitterly opposed, from strengthening the Aadhaar platform to MGNREGA itself, to welcoming 100 per cent FDI in food processing.  I am very glad that the Government has seen the errors of its ways in withdrawing the proposal to tax EPF. This was an unwelcome proposal, which really overlooked the reality of why middle-class people actually withdraw their money from the Provident Fund.  They do it for major expenses ,not to create new annuities. So, I am glad that the Government has withdrawn this proposal.

          If I can look at all the lists of UPA achievements and their actions, I can certainly quote another poet:

That would be the right thing for the NDA to do, taking more of the very good ideas the UPA implemented over the last few years

          Now, Mr. Jaitley has also increased the allocation for housing under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana. But it is only 6.6 per cent  of the total estimate of Rs. 300,000 crore, which was required for the scheme, according to the Government, over the next seven years. Even more surprising, Mr. Chairman,  is that it is lower than the Rs. 24,600 crore  announced by the President.  The hon. President in his Address mentioned it. So, who is misleading the Parliament?  Is it the Finance Minister or the hon. President? One of them must be wrong, and the House needs to be told which number you are withdrawing.

          Similarly, the hon. Prime Minister has announced a generous corpus of Rs. 10,000 crore for Startup India, Standup India in Vigyan Bhavan in January.  But North Block has translated his promise of  Rs. 10,000 crore into an allocation of Rs. 1,100 crore.  So, where is the remaining corpus for innovation and entrepreneurship? Are we again hearing announcements from the Prime Minister that the Finance Minister has no intention to fulfill? 

          Many of Mr. Jaitley’s budgetary cuts are matters of grave concern.  Food Security is down by Rs. 5,000 crore; Fertilizer Subsidies are cut by Rs. 2,000 crore.  About Higher Education, we had already objected last year when for five new IITs, he had allotted Rs. 1,000 crore.  We said that by any yardstick, this is not enough. There are certain rules to be followed for much it costs to set up an IIT.  By the way, one of them is in Kerala and so, I have a strong interest in it.  He has  hacked the five IITs allotment to Rs.190  crore this year. This is honestly laughable, Mr. Chairman.  We cannot take these figures seriously.  They are not going to set up one-eighth of an IIT with Rs. 190 crore,  let alone do it for five IITs.

          In allocations to the Ministry of Minority Affairs, there is a cut; in allocation of the Ministry of Women and Child Development, there is a cut again. Nirbhaya Fund has been reduced from Rs.1,000 crore to just  Rs.500 crore.  Even  though of the 31 sanctioned One Stop Crisis Centres, only eight have become operational.

          The Minister for Women and Child Development had cited the Nirbhaya case when she talked about subjecting juveniles between 16 and 18 years of age to an adult correctional system.  I strongly objected to it at that time but she said that it was necessary to protect women and yet this Government has not done enough to set up facilities to assist victims of violence and rape.  It is, of course, much easy to shirk off responsibility by holding children accountable.  I am sure that serves a very expedient political purpose but there is no money to actually help the women even for what has been pledged by this Government in the last two years. 

Now, we have seen the merger of the Ministry of External Affairs with the Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs.  I will not go into the substantive merits of that.  My Party has its own views and they will speak about it.  But the fact is when you combine the two Budgets of these two Ministries of last year and you see what is the combined Budget of this year, the Finance Minister has cut Rs. 420 crore.  The Prime Minister talks of the Indian diaspora.  He addressed the Indian diaspora.  He talks about how important it is to support the well-being of the Indian diaspora but the funds allotted to their well-being have been cut by the Finance Ministry.  As the Standing Committee on External Affairs has repeatedly pointed out, the Ministry of External Affairs is grossly under-funded.  Now, we see in this year’s Budget, it became the worst.  The development assistance for the SAARC countries has been cut.  The allocation for Nepal has been reduced by 28.5 per cent, even though this is a country still recovering from a devastating earthquake, a terrible natural disaster, facing nation-wide shortages.  Now, I must say this.  I have really been seeing the way in which every request of the MEA is hacked by North Block that the biggest challenge for Indian Foreign Policy is not Pakistan Sir, but it is the Finance Ministry. 

          Even the Central Plan Outlay for the Ministry of Environment and Forests, including the National Afforestation Programme, has seen a budgetary cut of 66 per cent.  They had Rs. 1,446 crore in 2015-16 and now it is down to Rs. 480 crore and that too just after the Minister has gone and made these extravagant commitments at the Climate Summit in Paris.  No additional funds have been earmarked for the pledges made by India at COP-21.  One cannot even find the faintest mention about the reserve to start fulfilling our requirements of 2.5 trillion dollars announced by the Government of India for the Paris commitments over the next 15 years.  Now, if we are going to spend 2.5 trillion over the next 15 years, you better start now, but the Finance Minister has not given even a one paisa for these commitments.

          Let us face it.   Making promises with no intention to fulfil them is not exactly unfamiliar territory for this Government.  Too many promises from the previous Budget’s have not been executed or fulfilled. 

          What happened to the Expenditure Reforms Commission which was announced in Mr. Jaitley’s first Budget speech?  We have never heard about it.  What about last year’s SETU- Self Employment and Talent Utilization? … (Interruptions)

SHRI ARUN JAITLEY: We have submitted three reforms. They are extremely valuable.  Therefore, you should keep yourself informed.

1. SHASHI THAROOR: You have not placed them in Parliament Mr. Minister.

          So, what happened to the Self Employment and Talent Utilization or SETU and the Atal Innovation Mission or AIM which were announced with great fanfare by you last year but were not funded or even mentioned by you this year?

          Anyway, let me as an MP from Kerala also point out that despite the State Government of Kerala submitting its final logistics funds have not been found yet for an All India Institute of Medical Sciences in my State.  The promise made by, if not this Minister, another Minister - I cannot remember which  -  to declare Sabarimala as a National Pilgrimage Center with extra resources to boost tourism, remains unfulfilled.  Where is the promised corpus for rubber farmers and assistance for economically vulnerable immigrants returning from the gulf countries?  None of these commitments are mentioned in the Budget.  My own request for establishing a National Institute of Medicinal Plants in Trivandrum has been over-looked,  as has  National Centre for Ayurveda, despite the Government’s declared desire to promote Ayurveda for which it had even constituted a separate Ministry. The Court has failed to harness Kerala’s potential in traditional knowledge and Ayurvedic medicines in herbs.  But that is perhaps seen as a parochial point.  I am sure as one State has concerns, every State has concerns,  Mr. Chairman.

          The Government’s implementation rate of its previous promises is not encouraging.  Last year, Mr. Jaitley promised that six crore toilets would be built.  The actual achievement is barely ten per cent, 62 lakh toilets and not all of those have water or electricity.  The Government should have completed the mammoth task of laying pipes or water supply for more than 60 per cent of rural households that do not have piped water.         

          While Rs.5,000 crore for 2016 is a bit of an increase from last year’s allocation for water supply, it is much less than the allocation of  Rs.11,000 crore by the UPA in 2013. I know this is a leap year Budget clearly because it requires a leap of faith to trust the BJP’s numbers.

          The Finance Minister also missed an opportunity to devote more resources, in a targeted way, to something that his colleagues have trumpeted repeatedly in this House. They need to install broadband and increase internet speed in both rural and urban areas. The National Optical Fibre Network is far behind its intended coverage of two lakh and a half Gram Panchayats. They have only reached 40,000 Gram Panchayats. The only progress has been in renaming the scheme as BharatNet. We have often said this is not a game changing Government. It is a name changing Government. ???? ??? ??? ????

But they have also given a 300 per cent increase in the project cost which they have not funded in this Budget. Now I do not know if the Prime Minister actually intended to include rural India in his vision for digitisation. Digitisation through public wi-fi, hot spots, e-books, online medical consultation, medicine supply, mobile banking, e-courts, e-police—he mentioned all this in Parliament. Of course, 70 per cent of our rural households are operating without the internet and mobile phones that do not have internet connectivity. How can they access any of these services? How will you have the direct benefit transfers? The Minister has been proudly talking about the so called JAM trinity. I mean this may be JAM in the urban areas. But there is no butter or  JAM in the rural areas because only 27 per cent of the villages in our country have a bank within a radius of  five kilometres. And, of course, all the online services the Government wants to bring on stream. You have poor internet speed, and India is struggling today with the connection speed of 2.3 Mbps when the global average is 5 Mbps or more. How are we going to be able to deliver these services?

          Then, many of the promises are not new. Even though the Government has budgeted an increase in the allocation for Central Plan for agriculture, including this newly named Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana, it is still lower than the amount of Rs.19,047 crore allotted by the UPA in the last fiscal year 2014 in our Budget. At that time, already the UPA had provided for weather-based crop insurance, agriculture insurance, Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana and National Horticulture Mission. Clearly, there is nothing for farmer welfare that was not already provided for earlier. In fact, the NDA reduced the UPA’s allocations last year and then increased it this year. So, they have gone down. They are now atoning for their mistake by raising the budget. Plagiarism is, of course, the sincerest flattery. Interest subsidy subvention is also there in the UPA Budget.

          Anyway, the fact is, insurance schemes are very well but they are not a credible substitute for the missing capital expenditure on agriculture which alone can help pull farmers out of distress. I might say Arun Jaitley Saheb, this is the first time in living memory--I have asked many senior colleagues who have been here longer--that a Finance Minister has not even mentioned the defence allocation in the entire current fiscal year in his speech.

          Some of the Budget’s other omissions are also interesting. The Government has raised taxes on tobacco products saying it causes cancer but not beedis. So, is it signalling that it is okay for the poor beedi smoker to die of cancer but the rich, middle-class and upper middle-class cigarette smoker must stay alive? So, we must tax him.

          And, what about social sector spending? According to the latest World Development Indicators data, public spending on health and education is just 4.7 per cent of GDP in India compared with seven per cent in Sub-Saharan Africa. People think Sub-Saharan Africa is the poorest part of the world. They are spending seven per cent on health and education. We are spending 4.7 per cent. East Asia is spending 7.2 per cent. Latin America is spending 8.5 per cent and the rich OECD countries are spending 13.3 per cent. So, it is not a question of wealth or the amounts of money you are spending. It is the percentage and what priority you are giving it.  Frankly, if you take the entire basket of least developed countries, the figure for least developed countries is 6.4 per cent and we are only spending 4.2 per cent.

          Let me take education. This year’s allocation for the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan falls beyond whatever numbers they have come up with. It is much below the UPA’s allocation of Rs.26,608 crore in our period. Public spending on education is not only inadequate but it is also under-utilised. Only 57 per cent of the estimates were released last year. So, Arun Jaitley Saheb was speaking about expenditure as opposed to Budget Estimates.

          But on education, only 57 per cent of his own estimates were spent. … (Interruptions) Only one-fourth of the amount was spent in the first few months of the year and the quality of education has been suffering. The Prime Minister said that he saw this Budget as an examination. In this case, his report card will have to say ‘must try harder’!

          Enrolment in schools is not the only thing, we must have much more academic freedom. The fact is that at a time when independent thought, uninhibited deliberations and right to dissent in educational institutions are under threat, if you also starve them of money, how are we going to get better, well informed citizens of modern India to serve our nation?

          In regard to health, if you look at the fact that we need a colossal amount of money in order to achieve anything remotely like the declared objective of universal health coverage by 2030, the fact is that public health system is in a pretty bad shape. The Government has taken so long to deliberate on the National Health Policy, but the Budget for the Transport Ministry is 2.6 times the Budget of the Health Ministry. Even customs duty exemptions on 76 life-saving drugs – cancer drugs, HIV drugs – have been withdrawn by this Budget.

          Regarding the welfare measures for people with disabilities, it is particularly said that they have raised the budget, but there is no comprehensive legislation yet to guide the expenditure that they have raised in a futile manner because there is no disabilities law. It has been pending for two years in this Government. We must have a disabilities law in consonance with the international standards before we can usefully and effectively spend this money.

          Funds needed to spur infrastructure growth, as I mentioned in the beginning, are down by 12 per cent this year. This is Rs. 2.21 lakh crore this year while it was Rs. 2.51 lakh crore last year.

What about the money for addressing the problems of the banking sector? At least the Finance Minister could have offered us a roadmap on how he intends to recapitalize public sector banks with an allocation of Rs. 25,000 crore. In fact, we all know that there are so many NPAs. Mr. Chairman, it has been mentioned there are NPAs worth Rs. 3.6 lakh crore. Banks are unable to fund long-term infrastructure projects so many of which are stuck in the implementation stage. Mr. Jaitley, of course, will call it a legacy of the past, but it is his Government which failed to acknowledge the crisis in 2014 and resolve it as per the RBI’s recommendations on revitalization of distressed assets that year.

The fact is that manufacturing is down. For manufacturing to be internationally competitive, you require  policies that would reduce the cost of manufacturing, affordable interest rates, improved infrastructure, better trade facilitation, lower cost of power and, in other words, an entire ecosystem. Just having a slogan saying ‘Make in India’ will not do it. You need all of these and in any case, the budget for ‘Make in India’ has been cut by 35 per cent.

I come to job creation. 17.5 million people have found themselves unemployed under the BJP. The labour force participation rate has been going down. I have a former Labour Minister sitting in front of me. It is now as low as 47.2 per cent in rural areas and only 54 per cent in urban areas. Another 30 million will enter the workforce in the remainder term of Mr. Modi. What work will this Budget help them find? The female participation rate, by the way, is even lower at 30 per cent. Are there any targeted measures to help females work?

Wage demands of the organized sector are not being met. I have received a delegation of nurses, for example. The wage demands of our staff nurses are low even in the Seventh Pay Commission. Without satisfied nurses, how will our health care system function effectively? ???????????? ?? ?? ??? ???? ???, ????? ?????? ?? ?? ??? ???? ???, ????? ?? ????? ?? ?? ??? ?? ?????? 

Finally, we must ensure that this Government is held to the last of its earlier commitments. The Budget has confirmed the fears of many foreign observers that this Government is not going to make any significant institutional reforms. What will be the effect of all this on the rupee? During the election campaign, Mr. Modi was withering about the decline in the value of rupee, but it has fallen 16.5 per cent on his watch. It was 58.50 when he became the Prime Minister. He talked about it crossing the Finance Minister’s age, but now it has overtaken his age. Having plummeted to the depths of 68.85, even though it is slightly better at 67.41 today, the overall trend is that it seems to be well on the way to crossing all numbers and joining the BJP’s marg darshak mandal.

          You know, Sir, Mr. Modi wrote an article in the Economic Times on the last Budget of the UPA and he wrote saying : “This Budget is piecemeal. UPA wants to play safe.” He had repeatedly mocked the UPA for not thinking big. It is all the more disappointing that this Budget has also failed to think big, tried to play it safe and approach the country’s economic challenges piecemeal.

          Jaitley ji, the joke going around is that this is a good Budget only for the Aadhaar Card holding beedi smoker in need of dialysis who lost his Degree certificate and plans to launch a loss-making Start-up in a Gram Panchayat with MGNREGA funds. For everybody else, it is a huge disappointment.

Jai Hind, Mr. Chairman.