Budget: A missed opportunity is our biggest cost burden

It did a good job on many fronts but let us down on farm market reforms that were the need of the hour

- SATISH DEODHAR & VIJAY KELKAR

The budget presented on 1 February was important for India's new government, for it had won a mandate for a five-year term in power. Hence, it had to aim for a significant impact on India's economy towards the nation's long-term objectives.

It has done a good job on important economic challenges, such as ensuring the government's fiscal health and driving investments for growth. But it failed to initiate programmes to deal with structural problems brought to the fore by farmers from Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh. This is unfortunate. The finance minister quoted Telugu playwright Gurajada Appa Rao as saying, "A country is not just its soil, a country is its people." True, but sons of the soil have been crying out for solutions to farming issues and an impending climate disaster.

The finance minister also said that 'Viksit Bharat' envisioned farmers making our country the "food basket of the world." Yes, of course. But for achieving this, one needs to address distortions of our agricultural markets. Adam Smith famously said, "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self-interest." That self-interest would have been best served by initiating market reforms.

Further, the finance minister said that the government considered agriculture one of India's four powerful engines of growth, and that reforms would fuel this engine.