The latest Telangana State Budget introduced by Finance Minister T Harish Rao follows the same template that the Bharat Rashtra Samithi has used for the past few years. Announce a highest-ever Budget each year, egregiously exaggerate revenue and expenditure numbers, underspend the previous year’s allocated expenditure, and blame the Centre for failing to meet the numbers.
In its reports on Telangana’s finances, the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) has advised the state government year after year against making a mockery of the budget process to make tall claims about huge allocations. In the words of the CAG, the Telangana “State government needs to make a realistic budget based on reliable assumptions of the needs of the Departments and their capacity to utilise the allocated resources to avoid huge and persistent savings on welfare and developmental activities.” Simply put, the Telangana government must stop exaggerating the Budget numbers for propaganda purposes.
Telangana State Finance Minister T. Harish Rao did the same thing again this year. The revised estimates for 2022-23 presented in this year’s Budget show that the state will spend around 20,000 crores less than what it budgeted last year. This pattern has been consistent. Over the past three years, the revised numbers have always been at least eight to nine percent less than the budgeted numbers. Looking at the record of the government and this year’s Budget, one can easily conclude that this year is no exception. Instead of using the Budget as a financial tool, the BRS government has always used it as a propaganda tool.
Of course, no keen observer of the state’s politics was surprised that this year’s Budget is the same old wine in the same old bottle. Since the elections are due by the end of the year, what matters for propaganda is the claims the government can make during the election campaign. But, of course, the polls would be long over by the time the revised estimates or the actual expenditure numbers are out. Yet, even with these imaginary show numbers, the finance minister couldnot devise a Budget that allowed his party to claim to have fulfilled their promises to voters.
For example, take the promise of waiving agricultural loans taken by farmers, up to one lakh rupees. This promise was estimated to cost about 25,000 crore. The BRS government failed to fulfil this promise in the first two years of its second term. After pressure increased from the opposition parties, especially the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the government waived loans up to Rs. 25,000 in the first phase in 2021 and up to 50,000 in the second phase in 2022. It had spent a paltry 408 crores in 2021 after making plans worth 4,900 crore last year. These amounts constitute a mere 20 percent of the money needed to fulfil the promise. Going by the ‘Ab ki baar Kisan Sarkar’ rhetoric of Kalvakuntla Chandrasekhar Rao, the BRS party president and wannabe ‘Desh ki Neta’ everyone assumed at least for appearance’s sake, the Budget would allocate the remaining 20,000 crore needed to fulfil this promise to the farmers of Telangana. No such luck. The Rs 6,385 crore allocation for farm loan waiver, coupled with the previous two years’ spend, does not even make it to fifty percent of the allocation needed to fulfil the promise. Unsurprisingly, there was no mention of his other promise to farmers – free fertilisers.
Akin to the waiver of farmers’ loans, the allocation for the much-hyped ‘Asara’ pension scheme also falls into the same category. The BRS government’s promise of expanding the scheme to lakhs of new beneficiaries has yet to get any allocation. A paltry Rs 200 crore extra was allocated this year.
In many of his press conferences, KCR had justified his call for rewriting the Constitution so that his pet scheme, ‘Dalit Bandhu,’ could be expanded nationally. Even then, this Budget only allocated Rs 17,700 crore for Dalit Bandhu– the same as last year. But almost all the money budgeted for the previous year remained unspent. As it is, the amount is so tiny that it would take decades to fulfil the promise. Even then, this scheme had no rollover allocation from last year’s unspent amount. Moreover, there is no mention of the other two Bandhus in the Budget – GirijanaBandhu and BC Bandhu, much to the disappointment of tribals and Backward Castes people.
The allocations for Education and Health foresee a continuation of the dismal state of these two sectors in the state. The students of the state, especially those from poor backgrounds, will have to endure the lack of infrastructure, toilets, books, uniforms, and healthy food. In addition, the need for more schoolteachers and support staff will continue. Healthcare, too, will continue to suffer. The inadequate availability of doctors, nurses and medicines will also not see any progress this year.
It’s time Telangana gets a non-BRS government to extricate it from the financial mess the two stints of BRS rule have put it in. Over to the voters.
(The author is BJP TS spokesperson)
