The good that people do is often lost in what they don’t do. This could well be the case with the Union Budget 2024.
In the news media and on social media — and in political circles — the charcha has been about what Hindustan Times called ‘Coalition Economix’.
The reams of newsprint daily newspapers devoted to the positive aspects of the budget in sectors like infrastructure, education, MSES, etc. were overwhelmed by the perceived political goal—‘Coalition bachane wala budget’ (TV9 Bharatvarsh).
And that stuck to Budget 2024 from the moment Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman completed her 83-minute speech in the Lok Sabha, Tuesday. Cries of foul play were heard from the Opposition as MPs stepped out of Parliament, and TV news channels immediately relayed their message to the public.
Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi had no sooner derided the budget as “Yeh kursi bachao budget hai…” than it became the top TV headline for the rest of the day.
Until Wednesday morning, the news channels were fixated with the ‘Viksit Bharat v/s Kursi Bachao’ (Aaj Tak) with channels like India TV asking, “Kursi Bachao Budget?” They went live to Opposition parties’ protest outside Parliament and interviewed as many leaders as they could – Samajwadi Party’s Akhilesh Yadav is currently a favourite go-to politician for news channels.
On Tuesday evening, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s doomsday intonation of ‘Dark, dark, dark’ for the budget echoed across news TV.
Newspapers on Wednesday morning tried hard to balance out this message — economic papers especially: it was ‘Growth@Work’ for Mint while The Economic Times’ lead headline called it, ‘Fiscally fit & on the Jobs hunt’.
It highlighted two big macro and micro elements of the budget: fiscal stability and employment generation. Industry experts who wrote in the newspaper uniformly praised the budget—echoing CII chief Sanjiv Puri’s reaction: “…extremely good budget” (Times Now).
But ‘coalition compulsions’ (Republic TV) were never far from the headlines: in the opening sentence of its front-page lead, The Times of India wrote, “The effect of 2024’s Lok Sabha results was writ large on the first Budget of Modi 3.0 with employment creation given pride of place and keeping allies happy too very much in focus.”
The Indian Express didn’t waste any words—“Election Outcome Budget” read its top Wednesday headline. It said the main thrust of the budget was “… coming to terms with the compulsion of coalition politics…”
Also read: Modi govt’s Budget 2024 plays unabashed appeasement politics—after borrowing Congress ideas
Balancing the budget analysis
All because of one figure: 28
On Wikipedia, that is called a “happy figure”—and so it was for the ruling TDP in Andhra Pradesh and JDU Bihar. In fact, the Express quotes Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu saying, “happy days are here again…”
Between them, Naidu’s TDP and Kumar’s JDU contribute 28 Lok Sabha MPs to the NDA, thereby ensuring the stability of the Modi coalition government. No wonder they got a “…bouquet of sops for critical allies…” wrote Hindustan Times, amounting to Rs 59,000 crore for Bihar and Rs 15,000 crore for Andhra Pradesh, it added.
Rajdeep Sardesai called it a “big bonanza..” for them; Times Now said Bihar and Andhra Pradesh “score big”. The political debates at prime time also saw a face-off between BJP and Congress.
Without a doubt, the Lok Sabha election results and the BJP’s dependence on the JDU and TDP were the primary focus of the lead stories in the news media on Budget 2024 — and the Opposition’s point of view was the dominant one: viewers will and do think of this as a “kursi bachao budget”.
The other major budget offering the media dwelt on was the employment-linked incentives and internship guarantees in the private sector’s top 500 companies for young people – everyone saw this as another lesson well learnt by the NDA government from the Lok Sabha poll results.
“It’s raining jobs, jobs, jobs,” said an elated anchor Rahul Kanwal on India Today’s Budget Special. But Sardesai, seated alongside him, was dubious: “… the intent is in the right direction but the reality on the ground is very different…” he said.
On ABP News, anchor Sandeep Chaudhary wondered if the job generation schemes were “window dressing” or realistic. That was pretty much the news media reaction: looks good on paper but can it be implemented?
At Republic TV, Arnab Goswami was far more sceptical: he said this could be termed a “flat budget” — the government could have been more “generous” in the things it did to win over the youth and the middle class: this is “unthought, unstudied, unresearched…” he said. He questioned the Rs 5,000 monthly stipend allowance for young people – was it really enough of an incentive?
Several newspapers including The Times of India and Hindustan Times were much struck by Finance Minister Sitharaman’s concession to the cruise ship industry—to promote cruise ship tourism in India. In a story entitled ‘Eat Pray, Cruise: How govt wants to channel traveller in you’, TOI reported the budget had proposed a “simpler tax” for foreign cruise companies offering domestic cruises in India.
Perhaps, this gives us a good conclusion: judging by the media coverage, Budget 2024 seems to be in cruise control but the economy is not going full steam ahead.
If you are a Pidi with a collar around your neck, it did stick. Otherwise, not. There is concerted effort by ecosystem to make RaGa out of Pappu post election.