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Spectacle Sans Substance
FRONTLINE
|March 2, 2018
Union Budget 2018-19 turns out to be an exercise that carries forward the use of hyperbole on which the Narendra Modi regime rests. Two major welfare measures, minimum support price for farmers and health care for the poor, have been announced with fanfare but with no plan to implement them as policy.
A BUDGET IS NOT A MERE STATEMENT OF intent but a financial commitment that the government makes to actualise its intentions that are part of its explicitly stated set of policies. The most striking aspect of Finance Minister Arun Jaitley’s Budget for 2018-19, which bears the heavy imprint of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, is its focus on the spectacle rather than substance. This is evident throughout: in its so-called “farmer-friendly” focus, its unveiling of the “world’s largest health care programme”, its approach to revive sagging investment in industry, and its approach to employment and social security programmes. As the accompanying articles in this issue demonstrate, Modi’s focus has been on the optics of the spectacle rather than on addressing the needs of a slackening economy that has resulted in stressed livelihoods.
This Budget is unique in many ways but most of all for what it does not contain instead of what it actually does.
THE FARM-FOCUS MYTH
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