Dibrugarh, Feb 2: The All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC), Assam State Committee, on Friday said the Finance Minister’s Interim Budget speech was disconnected from micro reality and was focused on a rosy picture of the economy before the Parliamentary election.

“Modi government has shown loyalty to Corporates continuously by slashing corporate tax. Borrowing is at a record high and common people are suffering from price rise. There is no relief for unemployed youth, moreover unemployment rate crosses its forty-five years of records,” stated Ranjan Chowdhury, Secretary AITUC, Assam State Committee.

He emphasised that the interim budget was an election speech by the Finance Minister, praising her government, having done marvellous achievements in various walks of life by unabashedly using unsubstantiated data and falsehoods. “The budget once again is entirely directed towards advantage to international finance capital, and government’s favourite Corporates at home as against Public sector enterprises, Cooperatives and MSMEs, as is evident from the policy announcement encouraging FDI, and favoring monopoly houses to take over post harvesting operations,” he said.

Chowdhury also pointed out that the Finance Minister was silent on employment opportunities. He said fixed term employment is being implemented, whereas outsourcing and contractualization is encouraged and the sanctioned posts remain vacant.

“The speech claims to have given credit assistance to 74 lakh street vendors. Their own admission that only 2.3 lakh received credit the third time, lays bare the truth. The allocation of budget for MGREGA is continuously being reduced every year and this year also it is 5 percent less than the actual expenditure in 2022-23,” he further said.

He noted that the budget has given lowest ever provision for agriculture and allied services, a decline of 22.3 percent, 6 percent decline even from revised budget. He claimed that the policy is directed to annihilate the poor and marginal farmers.

“Contrary to the false claim of the women participation in labour force, they have not even reached to the employment level what existed prior to Covid-19, the women’s paid employment has fallen dramatically adding to their miseries. Gender Parity Index for India has fallen further,” he said.

He further added, “The wage arrears of work done are also included in this allocation. Another truth is that only one percent of the 56 million households who applied for jobs were given work of 100 days only. Another naked truth is that 5.48 crore MGNREGA workers were removed from registered the jobs cards list.”

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