Farmers Movement Archive

Nirmala Sitharaman’s budget speech underlines govt’s focus on poll-bound states

Investment for highways and Metro rails, announcement for major fishing harbours and welfare funds for tea workers—complete with a quote from Rabindranath Tagore early in the budget speech—set the ruling dispensation’s underlying focus on poll-bound states in the Union Budget for 2021-22. Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Kerala and Assam along with the Union Territory of Puducherry will face state elections in April-May this year and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is leaving no stone unturned to win Bengal and Puducherry, improve its foothold in Kerala and Tamil Nadu and retain power in Assam. All these states, especially West Bengal, the third-largest electoral state with 42 Lok Sabha seats, are the key focus of the BJP. Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman quoted Tagore’s “Faith is the bird that feels the light and sings when the dawn is still dark” to emphasise how India is well-poised to be the land of promise and hope in a post-Covid world, before her budget speech rolled out schemes with an eye on poll-bound states. Also Watch: Budget: Watch farmer leader Rakesh Tikait’s reaction to FM Nirmala’s speechHer budget also proposed ₹1,000 crore for the welfare of tea workers, especially women and their children in Assam and West Bengal—a major social issue that has wider political ramifications in the BJP’s citadel of north Bengal and Assam. A total of 675km of highway works in West Bengal worth ₹25,000 crore including the upgrade of a Kolkata – Siliguri road and “further works worth over ₹34,000 crore covering more than 1,300km of National Highways” in Assam where highway works worth around ₹19,000 crore are in progress—were announced in the budget. Sitharaman also announced, “A total of 1,100km of National Highway works in Kerala at an investment of ₹65,000 crore, including a 600km section of the Mumbai-Kanyakumari corridor in Kerala” and said the Gomoh-Dankuni section of 274.3km of the Eastern Dedicated Freight Corridor will be taken up soon. She also added that “We will undertake future dedicated freight corridor projects namely East Coast corridor from Kharagpur to Vijayawada, East-West Corridor from Bhusaval to Kharagpur to Dankuni and North-South corridor from Itarsi to Vijayawada. Detailed Project Reports will be undertaken in the first phase.” Both Kharagpur and Dankuni are key towns in West Bengal. Two more road projects, running through the poll-bound states, also found mention in the speech. Sitharaman announced that Bengaluru-Chennai and Chennai-Salem expressways will be awarded and construction would start in FY 21-22. These projects will not only fill the critical gaps in connectivity in these states but also provide employment for locals. The long list of infrastructure projects also includes the Centre’s funding of 11.5km in the second phase of Kochi Metro Railway, 118.9km in Phase 2 of the Chennai Metro Railway and similar projects in Bengaluru and Nagpur. The finance minister also announced major fishing harbours in Kochi, Chennai and Bengal’s Petuaghat, apart from Visakhapatnam and Odisha’s Paradip, and proposed “substantial investments” to develop these places as modern fishing harbours and fish-landing centres. “We will also develop inland fishing harbours and fish-landing centres along the banks of rivers and waterways,” the minister announced. The BJP was able to open its account in Kerala in the last assembly polls. It has three MLAs in Bengal but in the 2019 national election, the party won 18 seats in its best tally in the largest eastern state. The BJP doesn’t have any seat in Tamil Nadu but hopes to be part of a key alliance.

Hindustan Times

01-02-2021

India