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I
have been wondering over my fanatic excitement
with the FM’s budget speeches in February every
year. Many a times, I left my serious work and
came home to listen to the speech and the
reactions of the experts. Dr. Pranab Ray started
live show of budget on NDTV. And thereafter, it
became very popular too. Why have I kept on
hearing the budget speeches so religiously for
all these years? Was I benefited anyway? A
number of times I sent some suggestions too.
Once I wrote that the government must provide an
insurance cover for all the high-IT paying
employees of the private companies to cover
their old age medical problems. Basically, the
system does believe in communicating back to the
queries or suggestions of 'aam adami'. It is the
same today also.
However, I have some questions from the present
finance minister who shall be presenting perhaps
his fourth budget this year after the UPA came
in power.
What happened to the repair of the huge number
of water bodies scattered all over the country
and the upgradation of existing ITIs that he
promised in his first speech? Will he provide
the number completed? And if nothing significant
has been done why should he keep on making
promises? What right he has to emotionally
charge the people and then break the dreams?
How many kms of roads were 4- and 6-laned last
year by NHAI?
How much generation capacity in MWs got added?
How many additional villages were connected by
roads and provided electricity connections last
years under Bharat Nirman?
I remember FM promises to cut down the time and
cost of doing business in India. Recent World
Bank report provides our real performance record
in this regard.
“India fares dismally in a global comparison of
business practices, notwithstanding all the
international attention it is getting. India is
ranked 134th among 175 countries in overall ease
of doing business. India’s most miserable
numbers are in dealing with licenses (155th),
paying taxes (158th), and enforcing contracts
(173rd).”
“Even in South Asia, India ranks near the bottom
in case of doing business (6th) and starting a
business (8th), dealing with licenses (7th),
paying taxes (8th), enforcing contracts (6th).”
How can our lawyer FM and then the economist PM
expect huge FDI to flow in the country with so
poor a condition? Can the FM tell the countrymen
why can’t this be improved in a time frame? What
are the bottlenecks and why can’t that be
removed?
It would have been prudent if FM and the
government emphasized on actual physical
achievements rather than providing the expenses
made in crores under different headings.
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Comments: |
Indra Jee,
As expect a very good analysis with
numbers (the best part of it) about
the FMs performance. The way I see
it is we as a countrymen are the
root of the problem. We gave power
to the leaders who look good on
paper. All with big big
qualification but with low self
respect. The Central government is
controlled by a Lady who has no
interest in seeing India as a
developed country whatsoever. She
just happens to be the wife of one
of our Prime Minister's son and our
MPs could not find a better leader
than her in whole of the country.
But that is not where it stops. Our
second act of foolishness is we
believe in promises and later forget
to ask those promise makers where is
the fulfillment of those promises
they made. I guess "Kya Hua Tera
Wada" song should be played when
they come to ask for vote next time.
As far as budget is concerned though
I live in a different part of the
world I do follow the budget
proceedings as much as possible. And
next day make sure that I read all
the news clip which talks about the
budget to understand what they are
trying to convey. To my
disappointment they never (very
rarely) do a viz-a-viz comparison of
the promises made and fulfilled.
Every budget speech is nothing more
than a bunch of lollypops given to
general public and takes away lots
more than what it gives in form of
review/amendments etc. They will say
that petrol prices have gone down by
2 Rs but they will never say how
much the increase was during the
financial year. - Samir Kumar
Mishra, Brisbane, Australia - Feb.
20, 2007 |
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