Congress MP Shashi Tharoor on Thursday termed finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman's interim budget 2024 as ‘disappointing’, saying that it sounded like the Modi government's final budget.
During her budget speech earlier in the day, Sitharaman had redefined GDP or gross domestic product as ‘governance, development and performance’. In an interview to news agency PTI, Tharoor said,"Under this dispensation 'G' stands for for governmental intrusion and tax terrorism, 'D' for demographic betrayal and 'P' for poverty and rising inequality."
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The Congress MP said that the ‘omissions’ were ‘startling’ as unemployment did not find a mention in the budget speech. " The government gets a "failing grade" on the count of improving the lives of the common person," he added.
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"Inflation, particularly of food items, has been so shocking that people at the bottom 20 per cent are unable to buy in the bazaar what they could buy a year or two ago. That is a lived reality of the ordinary Indian which is why the government wants them to vote out of pride for a Ram mandir or out of pride for bashing Pakistan on Balakot, Pulwama...that is what they did last time in 2019," Tharoor said.
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"This time it is going to be Ram mandir and no doubt the Abu Dhabi mandir is going to be added to the mix. That frankly is not what governments are elected to do, governments are elected to improve the lot of the common man and woman. Has this government done that? I would say on that particular yardstick, they get a failing grade," he said.
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‘Picture abhi baki hai’
{{/usCountry}}"This time it is going to be Ram mandir and no doubt the Abu Dhabi mandir is going to be added to the mix. That frankly is not what governments are elected to do, governments are elected to improve the lot of the common man and woman. Has this government done that? I would say on that particular yardstick, they get a failing grade," he said.
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‘Picture abhi baki hai’
{{/usCountry}}In her budget speech, Sitharaman said the government will present a detailed roadmap of ‘Viksit Bharat’ in the full budget in July, asserting confidence that Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be re-elected in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections.
However, Tharoor called it a ‘foregone conclusion’. “Picture abhi baki hai' that is the obvious line. The votes can't be counted until they are cast and votes have to be cast when the time comes,” he said.
"There is still time for the opposition to get its act together and for people to let the “sheen of the Ram mandir and the other kind of identity appeals wear off and to confront their own economic realities”, Tharoor added.
Asked about the Congress' concerns on economy not finding electoral resonance with the BJP winning the last round of polls, Tharoor said their experience in south has been different from that in north.
(With PTI inputs)