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Common man cynical about Budget: Cong

Charging the National Democratic Alliance government with ''skewed priorities'', the Congress Party on Tuesday said the common man was cynical about the Budget as jingoism due to political compulsions has led to slippages in revenue collections and fiscal deficit.

Participating in the resumed discussion on the Union Budget in the Rajya Sabha, Congress member Kapil Sibal said the promises made in the last few Budgets like fiscal responsibility, downsizing and zero based budgeting have remained only on paper.

Regretting that the Budget contained very little to spur demand by stepping up public expenditure, Sibal said it was unfortunate that the government instead of increasing allocation for social sector had chosen to step up defence expenditure.

''Are we not giving impetus to arms race in the region. Are we not in a way giving a signal to our neighbours with finance minister saying in his Budget speech that he was willing to spend more on defence if needed,'' Sibal said.

None would oppose increased spending on defence in the present circumstances but it did not mean priorities in the Budget be skewed, he said.

Sibal said the Budget had not provided any direction for utilising the excess capacity in the industry besides creation of additional capacity.

''Taxes are collected in a laggard manner," he said, adding no serious effort had been made to check tax evasion.

Sinha claimed that he had made an attempt in the Budget to provide azadi (freedom) to farmers but in reality they wanted azadi from the government as there was very little in the Budget for them, Sibal said.

As coalition politics would continue to remain in the coming years, Sibal said there were all the more reasons that attempts should be made to develop political consensus.

Ramdas Agarwal (Bharatiya Janata Party) and C Ramachandriah (Telegu Desam Party) appealed that all parties must sit together to arrive at national consensus on economic reforms specially measures to seek withdrawal of subsidies, which annually were costing the country a whopping Rs 498 billion.

Agarwal said the country should abandon half-hearted approach and go whole hog for speedy implementation of economic reforms.

The TDP member called for giving incentive on savings as they generated 38 per cent of investments in the country.

Lok Sabha

Meanwhile in the Lok Sabha the Congress charged the BJP-led coalition of having the dubious distinction of bringing the growth rate down to 4.5 per cent, lowest in two decades.

Initiating a discussion on the Budget 2002-03, Mani Shankar Aiyer said the government has failed on all fronts of the economy with almost all sectors adversely affected by the policies pursued by it.

"The only area where it has shown growth is government expenditure", he remarked.

Ridiculing the government's claim of achieving drastic reduction in poverty, he accused the former Minister for Statistics Arun Shourie of being a "master manipulator" who has "fudged figures" on statistics of poverty.

He demanded that the government come out with an annual state of poverty report as recommended by the Lakadawala Committee.

Lashing out at the government's divestment policy, he said while in the earlier regimes the emphasis was on "investment", the BJP-led coalition was only selling of these public assets.

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