What To Expect From The Budget 2016

How the RSS has been influencing the government’s economic policies and what it expects from the coming Budget.

- Anilesh Mahajan

 

Every year, starting late January and continuing until the Budget is presented on the last day of February, a host of delegations representing all kinds of industry sectors, interests and ideologies make their way to the finance minister’s imposing North Block office. They all have myriad suggestions that they hope the minister will include in his Budget proposals. This year’s procession has begun as well. But this time it includes two delegations whose suggestions will be taken much more seriously than most others. On January 28, a five-member team of the Swadeshi Jagran Manch (SJM), the economic wing of the RSS, met Minister of State of Finance, Jayant Sinha. A few days earlier, a delegation of senior leaders of the RSS itself had conferred with Finance Minister Arun Jaitley.

Alongside its commitment to Hindutva and cultural nationalism, the RSS also has very definite ideas on the direction the Indian economy should take, and has been forcefully conveying these to the government from the time the NDA came to power in May 2014. Often the government has listened. Sources maintain, for instance, that the decision last August to withdraw six controversial amendments to the land acquisition bill and leave it to individual states to make changes if any was taken at the behest of the RSS. “We explained to the government that the bill was not good for it politically,” says an RSS leader, who does not want to be identified. “Even if the government managed to push it through with the earlier amendments by calling a joint session of Parliament, the states would have to ratify it and that would take another two years.”