PRESS STATEMENT – BUDGET 2018 - CITU
Press
Release
1st
February 2018
THE
UNION BUDGET 2018-19: ANTI-PEOPLE ANTI-WORKER AND DECEPTIVE
The
Union Budget 2018-19, presented by the Finance Minister of the Narendra Modi
Govt today on a preliminary scrutiny, turns out to be deceptive one,
meticulously articulated to misguide and confuse the people. The Budget is
anti-workers, anti-people and also militates against the national interest.
CITU condemns such an anti-people exercise.
The
Budget remained liberal about extending concession to business houses. On the
plea of supporting Micro, Small and Medium Scale Enterprises (MSMEs) the Budget
extended the reduced corporate tax rate of 25% to companies having Rs 250 crore
annual turnover. Is the turnover the right measure of identifying an MSME or
the ‘capital deployed’ should categorise the MSME more honestly ? Will it
really benefit the genuine MSMEs or allow the big players to corner the benefit
? However through such deceptive manner the burden on corporate houses
has been reduced further by Rs 7000 crore while giving no relief to suffering
millions reeling under post GST indirect tax burden. This along with other
pro-corporate policy drives continued to remain the pattern of budget
exercise of the Modi Govt in successive years of its governance pushing the
entire country in the midst of extreme and obscene income inequality of one percent
people cornering 73% of the national wealth. And yet the Govt will continue to
call itself pro-poor.
Budget
speech made no mistake in mentioning its resolve to extend the atrocious “fixed
term employment” system to all the sectors consistent with its brazenly
anti-worker pro-corporate drive for labour-law changes designed to impose
slavery on the workers. While speaking lavishly about improving health,
education and social welfare services toward universalisation, it remained
totally negative in considering the long standing demands of about a
crore workers working in its flagship scheme of NHM, Mid-day-Meal(MDM) and ICDS
(Anganwadi) and other related central govt schemes of extending them at least
the right to statutory minimum wages and attendant social security benefits. In
fact the allocation under National Health Mission (NHM) has been reduced and on
ICDS and MDM there are marginal increase that too for other expenditures. Such
an attitude is utterly condemnable.
On
employment generation also, the claim made in the budget speech is also not
true. In fact, even as per official estimate, the net employment generation has
turned negative in absolute term if job-losses owing to closure of
factories/establishments during the period is taken into account. The claim
of creation of 70 lakh jobs in the formal sector said to be based on the
increase in number of EPFO data as touted by a so called “independent
study” upheld by the Finance Minister is another hoax to confuse and misguide
the people and a cruel joke on the several lakhs of unemployed. Rather every
step of this Modi Govt is degenerating the employment situation in the
country; and all concessions being given to business houses by the Govt
including bearing the burden of employers contribution in EPF, allowing liberal
income tax rebate to employers on account of wages paid to the newly employed
workers etc is actually an arrangement of organized pilferage from the national
exchequer
by
the employers’ class in complicity with the custodians of the said exchequer,
without creating any
employment
whatsoever. Added to this has been the recent move of abolishing all
posts in central govt establishment deliberately kept vacant for last five
years, killing lakhs of employment positions.
The
Budget speech has gone extremely lavish in pronouncing commitments for
development of agriculture and rural development along with launching so many
schemes, whereas budgetary allocation for 2018-19 both on account of
Agriculture and Allied Services and Rural Development marked a marginal
increase of Rs 9793 crore in nominal term meaning actually a decline both in
real terms and also as a percentage of GDP and total budgetary allocations. The
Budget gave a shockingly surprising news that the Govt has already implemented
the Minimum Support Price (MSP) at the rate of one and half times of production
cost for majority of the Rabi Crops and now the Govt is committed to extend the
same to Kharif crops in the current year also which is totally untrue.
Even Govt’s deposition before the Apex Court in this matter is reportedly
negative.
Similarly,
the budgetary statement about putting in place under its flagship programme of
National Health protection Scheme to provide for secondary and tertiary care
hospitalization at the rate of Rs 5 lakh per family per year to 10 crore poor
and vulnerable families, if weighed in terms of actual budgetary allocations,
turns out be another hoax. The budgetary allocation on this account is merely
Rs 1600 core which can cover hardly 10 lakh families (and not 10 crore). And
such discrepancy exposes the dubious intent. Overall, behind the shrill
fraudulent noise of all round development, the budget continued to remain a
contractionary budget and focus of almost all govt expenditures are designed to
benefit only the rich and propertied business class and the common people and
the workers in particular are being subjected to deeper exploitation and
repression.
Budget
speech lavishly spoke about developing self reliance in defence production and
what is being actually done is setting the process of destruction of the
existing indigenous manufacturing capabilities in the Ordnance
factories, the defence PSUs and country’s shipyards by way of mass scale
outsourcing in favour of private sector, both foreign and domestic
turning around half of the Ordnance Factories redundant and starving the
Defence PSUs and Shipyards of work-orders. On the same way, under the
camouflage of expanding Railway network, the project of total privatization of
Railways is being pursued in full swing. Are these in any manner serving
national interests or sabotaging the same in favour of foreign players ?
The
Govt has been moving fast in selling out the national assets through wholesale
privatization. In the current year the target for disinvestment /privatization
is kept at Rs 80000 crore to keep on the pace of its ‘destroy India’
programme under the camouflage of “Make in India”.
CITU
denounced the budget 2018-19 of the Modi Govt and calls upon the working class
to unitedly protest and fight against the fraud and exploitation they are
being subjected to simultaneously.
Issued by
(Tapan Sen )
General
Secretary
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