What he did instead was to call for Lord Indra to shower his blessing to ensure that agriculture productivity is not hampered due to inadequate rainfall. Of course, other than praying for Lord Indra, he also committed a few hundred crores towards pulses, milk, eggs, vegetables and other agri-commodities, but then provided no support system to boost their productivity and irrigation. And it is not that this is fact is unknown to him that China has dramatically improved its irrigation systems since the last couple of decades and is investing $2 billion annually to upkeep the standards. Additionally, this year, the Chinese government is planning to invest another 20 billion yuan ($293 million) for improving water irrigation and safety projects. And all this when around 50 per cent of China’s arable land is now irrigated – in comparison to just 30 per cent of total arable land in India. No wonder, our gross agriculture output is still a mere 40 percent of that of China! That apart, in his address, there was not even a single occasion where our FM announced any concrete plans to bring a second round of green revolution, an issue has almost become a national imperative now.
Moving from agriculture to the second issue that has been haunting the country all-year round – corruption and black money. It requires no statistical analysis to establish that corruption and scams can only be addressed by a strong judiciary and judicial reforms. Again, in this budget, as a sign of mere tokenism, Rs 1500 crores has been allocated for the judiciary, which includes setting up of rural and e-courts. No announcements were made to provide courts with special powers or creating special courts to fasten the judicial process. Same goes for black money. To address the whole issue on black money, the FM announced a five-fold strategy, but no strategy to get back the money already stashed abroad. For records, it’s primarily due to corruption and a perforated judicial system that our country has managed to stash an obscene figure of 1.4 trillion dollars in various tax havens. In fact, a brief glance through the budget speech indicates that Pranabda spoke six paragraphs on black money but found it inadequate to draft a single para to contain it, or to bring back the money from tax havens.
originally posted at:http://www.arindamchaudhuri.com/india-today-tomorrow/11-march.html
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