Union Budget 2011-12

The Union Budget for 2011-12 was presented by Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee in the Parliament on 28 February. The Budget can only be termed simple and tasteless. As was expected, it has not made any complex and tall promise.

Tax Exemption limit
Otherwise also, no great expectation and anything significant was expected from the budget. Such expectations are made usually when a new government comes to power in an election year. Of course, there were some demands. It was, for instance, demanded that the tax exemption limit should be increased to Rs.300,000 from the present Rs.160,000. The demand was made in view of the high price rise and the galloping inflation following the recommendations made by the Sixth Pay Commission. The sky rocketing price rise had diluted the monetary gains of the employees. In short, the increased pay packet got sacrificed at the altar of price rise.

The finance minister, however, paid scant attention to the demand. He only raised the exemption limit by a mere Rs.20,000 to the level of Rs.180,000. Yet employees who have no other source of income but salary may heave a sigh of relief? They would not be required to file the Income Tax return from the next fiscal year.

Separate Allocation of Rupees
Pranab Mukherjee has at least taken care of the Anganwari workers and helpers who indeed would be jubilant. The finance minister has doubted their monthly wages from the current Rs.1,500 to Rs.3,000 in the case of the Anganwari workers and from Rs.750 to Rs.1,500 per month for their helpers.

The increase in their wages indicates that the government has included the rural areas in the sphere of its priorities and does not remain confined to urban areas. This thinking gets further strengthen by the initiative that the loan amount for farmers has been increased to Rs. 4.75 trillion from the current Rs. 3.75 trillion. Similarly, the fund under the 'Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana' (National Agriculture Development Scheme) has been increased to Rs.78.6 billion from the current Rs.67.55 billion. There is a separate allocation of rupees three billion to encourage production of pulses.

Positive and Salutary Impact
The measures would certainly have positive and salutary impact on farmers. But, since our country is basically agrarian and largely dependent on agriculture, there was need to pay more attention to this aspect. There was, for example, the need to allocate funds for improvement of irrigation system and to deal with drought. In our country, drought is taken as a natural calamity and dealt in that way only, but drought has, in a way, become perennial with agriculture.

The other sector for which the people had great expectation was that of education. The budget 2011-12 proposes to incur an expenditure of Rs.520 billion on it. Apparently, the allocation appears to be a huge one, but it is too early to say anything with confidence whether we would succeed in implementing the Right To Education Act and derive reasonable benefit out of it. If one discusses education with regard to the minorities, the budget has an allocation of Rs.500 million for the setting up of (two) centers of Aligarh Muslim University at Murshidabad (West Bengal) and Mallapuram (Kerala). Undoubtedly, the measures would be welcomed.

Assessment
In short, the budget 2011-12 has attempted to please all by giving something to everyone and the budget presented by Pranab Mukherjee can be termed balanced to some extent. Yet, since he had commenced his speech by referring to price rise of essential commodities and the inflation and had expressed concern about it, he failed to come out with any concrete measure to address the situation. When he identified the reasons for the backbreaking price-rise and inflation, he should also have shown the way how these malaises could be addressed.