WILL THE BUDGET...

Roshan Kishore analyses the impact of the Narendra Modi government's interim budget ahead of the Lok Sabha elections

- Roshan Kishore

...impact elections?

The short answer to this question is nothing. There are no big-bang populist announcements after all. The slightly long and more correct answer is that it only reiterates the 24x7 political-economy plan, which has so far worked very well for the Narendra Modi government. The main contours of this plan are as follows.

In the 10 years the current government has been in power, it has deployed an intricate and detailed network of welfare measures and cultivated a large number of economically obliged voters who have come to be known as "labharthis" (beneficiaries). While welfare beneficiaries are not a new category in itself in India, the BJP's political genius lies in the fact that in the last decade, it has built a political communication highway between this vast mass of underclass and the Prime Minister who represents almost all of the political capital of the BJP.

The fact that almost all of India's welfare delivery now takes place through the direct benefit transfer (DBT) route, thanks to the Jan Dhan-Aadhaar-Mobile (JAM) trinity that has been a critical factor in building this highway. For these sections, the budget is just another day of political messaging in their lives. Every time they receive a welfare benefit - this could be something as inconsequential as a few kilograms of rice or as significant as a new house - the BJP's, and more importantly, the Prime Minister's political messaging is instant and relentless. By extending some of the schemes, such as a large addition to the number of houses under the rural housing scheme, the interim budget has shown that the government is focused on harvesting the new demographic crop of "labharthis", which is waiting to be obliged.