Image Courtesy: Financial Express
While the UP government, in its budgetary outlay has increased the overall provisions to Rs 4,56,248 crores from Rs.4,17,257 crores in the 2017-2018 budget, the fact that only 37.91 per cent of the total outlay has been spent until January 2018 means that as much as 62 per cent of the outlay needs to be spent in the next two months! This is not just bad fiscal practice but is likely to lead to huge misuse of funds. Besides it is not at all oriented towards the marginalised sections of Uttar Pradesh society.
There is a substantial cut in the budget outlay for the several sectors.
- In agriculture (grant number 11) Rs. 36687.31 crores was allocated in the year 2017-18 but only Rs. 20403.49 crores (55.61%) has been spent until Jan 2018. Similarly the expenditure for ST (Grant 81) is 24.16 %, Scheduled Castes (grant 83) is 45.69%, Handicapped & Backward Class (grant 79) is 26 %, Women & child is 43.3% and Forest Department is 47.56 %. The entire orientation of this year’s budget is away from that of a welfare state and meant to benefit only the private sector and the corporate sector. Examples can be seen from the Agriculture loan / insurance scheme and observations of Comptroller and Auditor General(CAG) of India and also from the allocations made for the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes.
- The subsidy on certified seeds was Rs. Rs. 65 crores in the year 20117-18 and has been substantially reduced to Rs. 55 crores in the year 2018-19. Similarly several other schemes that benefits to the farmers have been reduced budgetary allocations. The overall budget is against the interest of farmers.
- Forest working people have suffered from the relief as the Adityanath government has abandoned many schemes that directly benefit them. The Social Forestry (CCL) District Plan, expenditure for which in the previous year (2016-17) was Rs 230.51 crores has been reduced to Rs. 120 crores in the year 2018-19.
- For Dalits (Scheduled Castes), only Rs. 24,448 Cr has been allocated. Shockingly, within this allocation, as much as Rs. 2307 crores, close to ten per cent, is loan to power sector companies! Rs. 1713 crores is for canal and highways construction. Allocations in schemes like dairy, fisheries, sugar cane subsidy, etc. have been reduced drastically or abandoned.
- The Labour department (Employment) has started winding up its offices by reducing budget in the activities that matters for employment exchanges and employment to the youth. For example, while there is an allocation of Rs 66 crores for Employment Exchange offices, in the year 2018-19, within this, the allocation for facilitating training and distributing materials is a minimal Rs. 0.151 crore for the entire state.
- The UP state Health department has made a mockery of the budget making process. It appears to have manipulated figures in sections on ‘ increase and decrease’ in salary and ‘charges for professional and other services’. The amounts involved in this reduction and increase section is exactly Rs. 1177.84 crores. Similar lapses can be found everywhere in health sections of the state budget.
- For Women and Child Welfare, the budgetary allocation has been increased from Rs. 6353 Cr to Rs. 7481 crores, but within this, schemes like like maternal welfare, nutritional feeding to malnourished children, nutritional feeding to pregnant women have been abandoned and find no space in the fiscal allocations.
Overall picture of State Budget is just another Jumla and the state government wants to sell the illusion of Achchhe Din to the people.
The UP State Budget 2018-19 was released on 16th February, 2018. An analysis of the same, from the perspective of the marginalised sections of the State was released on February 26, 2018 at Uttar Pradesh Press Club in Lucknow