The PM’s speech in parliament at the end of the Budget session did not respond to criticisms of his government’s performance on all fronts: including unprecedented unemployment and inflation, and a criminally irresponsible Covid response that cost so many lives. Neither did he respond to questions demanding specific commitments instead of the vague budgetary phrases of “Amrit Kal” and the goal of “Bharat@100”. Instead he indulged in his by now predictable strategy of blaming the Opposition for all ills, and serving up outright lies.
In 2015, the Prime Minister and the Budget had announced a series of promises for 2022, the “Amrit Year” marking 75 years of India’s independence. These promises including doubling of farmers’ income, turning post offices across the country into payment banks for easy loans, ensuring potable water, toilets, a house, 24/7 electricity supply and road connectivity to every household in India. In 2022, the Budget – and the Prime Minister – have been totally silent on the failure to deliver on these promises. Instead, the same promises have been regurgitated or repackaged as fresh announcements. The sole difference that in 2015, the year 2022 has been called “Amrit Year” (the immortal year) when all these promises would come true; whereas in 2022 the Budget announced that we have entered the “Amrit Era” - and the promise will be realised by “Bharat@100” – that is, the centenary of India’s independence! So there is zero accountability on actual progress and performance by the Modi Government: the goalpost is just given a new “jumla” name (fancy name) and postponed by 25 years!
Budget 2022 promises to create 60 lakh jobs: without any detail on where these jobs are going to come from! There is no mention of filling the huge number of vacant jobs in government services – a demand that young educated unemployed people have been voicing for years with only police beatings to show for it. The Budget has slashed allocations to food subsidies, MNREGA, healthcare and public health. There is of course no transparency on how much the Government spent from the treasury on Pegasus software which has been used to spy on Indian citizens. But the Prime Minister’s response to any questions on these issues is to brand those asking the questions as anti-national.
The Prime Minister in his speech termed the Opposition to be “urban Naxals” and “tukde tukde gang” – terms coined by his propagandist media to suggest that all critics are traitors to the country. Worst of all, he chose to lie outright on the Government’s Covid response. He blamed the spread of Covid on Congress and AAP Governments of Delhi and Maharashtra for arranging transport to send migrant workers stranded by the lockdown, home. Shamelessly, he said this even as the Chief Minister of UP is making the false claim to voters in his state that he and none other arranged buses for stranded workers right at the start of the lockdown! Likewise, the BJP had boasted to voters in the Bihar elections that the BJP had “brought migrant workers safely home”.
The dominant sections of the media may trumpet the PM’s lies. But anyone can look around and see that the poor do not have houses, potable water, toilets, roads, jobs, loans, electricity; farmers’ incomes have not doubled; in fact unemployment, hunger and farmers’ distress is worse than ever. Everyone can recall the migrant workers forced to walk home during the pandemic, enduring beatings, sickness and death on the way. Everyone can recall that it is not migrant workers that caused Covid to spread: it was the Kumbh Mela and Bengal election rallies the PM insisted on holding that caused the deadly Covid second wave in India to take such an enormous toll. And they can recall that it was criminal shortage of oxygen and hospital beds that caused most of the deaths.
In elections and on the streets, India’s people are keeping accounts of the PM’s falsehoods and the Budgetary betrayals.
