IBNLive Chat: Budget will be driven by election motives

ANNUAL EXERCISE: Finance Minister P Chidambaram will present the Union Budget on February 29.

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Keywords: Chat , Union Budget 2008

New Delhi: Finance Minister P Chidambaram will present the Union Budget on February 29. The presentation of the Budget is one of the most closely followed event in India as it affects almost every one right from the housewife, salaried class, corporates, entrepreneurs and even those who have retired.

To find out what are the expectations of the people about the budget, IBNLive organised an online chat with financial journalist Sandipan Deb on Saturday.

Here we reproduce the full text of his chat.

Sadik Ismail: What you think is the driving force behind Budget 2008? Is it the poor man, corporate, election, middle class or a consensual approach?

Sandipan Deb: I hope I am wrong but I fear that this Budget would be driven by election motives more than anything else. So expect lots of sops to the "aam aadmi", and dread the knowledge that most of the money will maybe not reach. I don't want to sound overly pessimistic, but I think this is what will happen. We are at a critical point in our economic and political history when the economy is doing marvellously but politically we are fragmented. I think it will be a politician's budget, not an economist's.

Ramesh Kumar: Don't you feel the present finance ministry is doing excessive with the salary class people in collecting income tax. He has ignored the expenditure, metro city living cost, children education cost, and medical exp of a salary class while imposing heavy Income Tax. Same time irritating too much the compliance -prone citizen and failed to develop any mechanism to take a large no of income tax thieves in there net. My question is the income tax payers are not given any privilege whether in hospital or other public utility services. In nutshell no motivation for the honest tax payers.

Sandipan Deb: Yes, the tax-deductible-at-source people. I am also one of them. We are the easiest targets. If I remember correctly, Yashwant Sinha, when he was Finance Minister during the NDA regime, had suggested some sort of special privileges for people who pay taxes. I wish the government could something on those lines. John Kennedy once said that that a patriot is known by the taxes he pays. Suppose we got stickers to put on our cars or on our softboards (like Vodafone stickers) that said: I am an Indian and I pay tax for every Indian who is not as well-off as me. I think I would be proud to have that sticker up. If only the government could do a huge sticker campaign like Vodafone did.

Preetam: Each budget is pointless rhetoric in liberalization and reforms. Why can't the budget push for healthcare and education for all Indians? Healthcare and quality education is out of reach for most Indians, but you journos are obsessed with reforms.

Sandipan Deb: There is the NREGA scheme which envisages employment for everyone. But it's not working as well as it should. We are growing at 9.6 per cent a year, and our employment rate is falling at 3 per cent a year. This is scary. There is nothing more important we should do than invest in education. I will go so far as to say, education for the girl child, because that has ripple effects into various other areas that hold us back. Primary education is paramount. We need to set up some sort of mission for this, which is directed by people who are extraordinary achievers and tell them, do this for your country, we'll give you ten years, and you will not be bound by bureaucracy, just get all our children into school, make sure they have teachers, and change the nation. Governmental initiatives will not do it, there's too much leakage and corruption, you have to hand it over to people who do it from their heart and without any interest other than doing this because it needs to be done.