Dibrugarh: The All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC), Assam State Committee on Friday said that the Finance Minister’s Interim Budget speech was disconnected from the micro reality and was focused on a rosy picture of the economy before the Parliamentary election.
“Modi government has shown loyalty to corporate houses continuously by slashing corporate tax. Borrowing is at a record high and common people are suffering from price rises. There is no relief for unemployed youth, moreover, the unemployment rate crosses its forty-five years of records,” stated Ranjan Chowdhury, Secretary AITUC, Assam State Committee.
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He said, “This year’s budget was an election speech by the Finance Minister, praising her government, having made marvelous achievements in various walks of life by unabashedly using unsubstantiated data and falsehoods. The budget once again is entirely directed towards the advantage of international finance capital, and the government’s favourite corporate at home as against Public sector enterprises, Cooperatives, and MSMEs, as is evident from the policy announcement encouraging FDI, and favoring monopoly houses to take over post-harvesting operations.”
“The drive of privatisation and sale of Public assets and infrastructure are to continue according to the budget. The tax reduction of the rich and super-rich would continue but the common man would be facing increased taxes to meet the government’s deficit targets. The speech claims to have trained 1.4 crore youth, upskilled and reskilled 54 lakh youth and established 3000 new it is, hundreds of IITs, IIMs, AIIMS and Universities. But is silent on employment opportunities to them,” Chowdhury said.
He further added, “The fixed-term employment is being implemented, outsourcing, contractualisation is encouraged and the sanctioned posts remain vacant. In the face of severe unemployment and hopelessness, we are witnessing how young workers are being lured by BJP governments in states at the behest of the PMO to go to Israel, a war-torn conflict zone, to pursue its policy of siding with the US-Israel nexus of committing genocide against Palestinians and flouting the voice of world community for immediate ceasefire.”
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“The speech claims to have given credit assistance to 74 lakh street vendors. Their acceptance that only 2.3 lakh people received credit the third time; lays bare the truth. The allocation of budget for MGREGA is continuously being reduced every year and this year also it is five percent less than the actual expenditure in 2022-23,” he added.
Chowdhury said, “This budget has given lowest ever provision for agriculture and allied services, a decline of 22.3 percent, a six percent decline even from the revised budget. The speech talks of “periodic increase of minimum support price’ while sidelining the demand for enactment of a law guaranteeing MSP. As a result, Annadata is suffering as none of his demands have been addressed. The allocation for fertilizer subsidy is less than the spending in 2022-23. The policy is directed to annihilate the poor and marginal farmers.”
“Contrary to the false claim of the women’s participation in labour force, they have not even reached the employment level that existed before Covid-19, the women’s paid employment has fallen dramatically adding to their miseries. Gender Parity Index for India has fallen further,” he further said.
He added, “The wage arrears of work done are also included in this allocation. Another truth is that only one percent of the 56 million households who applied for jobs were given work of 100 days only. Another naked truth is that 5.48 crore MGNREGA workers were removed from registered the jobs cards list.”