‘…dil ko behlane ke liye…khayal accha hai’: Tharoor quotes Ghalib, slams Budget as ‘carefully created illusion’

“It ignores unemployment, it ignores rising living costs, and indeed ignores inequality, offering little to address the real struggles and aspirations of the aam aadmi. The government speaks endlessly of welfare, but spending tells a very different story. Behind flashing, flashy announcements lies chronic underutilisation and administrative failure,” Tharoor alleged during the discussion.

“Where promises are loud…budgets are grand, but delivery is conspicuously absent…The Indian state is shrinking, not by design but by compulsion. Government expenditure as a share of GDP, has declined over the past decade…Tax receipts have remained flat, relative to GDP, disinvestment is underperformed, and non-tax revenues increasingly rely on extraordinary transfers, such as Reserve Bank of India dividends—an unsustainable substitute for a stable revenue base,” he added.

Terming it “troubling”, Tharoor flagged the shift in the tax burden towards individuals bearing a greater share of the tax burden than corporations, despite sharp post-Covid pandemic profit growth, adding that in 2017, corporate taxes were 3.2 per cent of the GDP, while income tax was 2.3 per cent. In this fiscal year, 10 years later, they are projected to be 3.1 per cent for corporates and 3.7 per cent for personal income tax of individuals.

This, he said, meant that revenue is coming “disproportionately from the individual taxpayers” with the government relying on low-cost measures such as tax simplification and targeted incentives, but with “no credible medium-term framework” linking spending to employment and productivity.

“Capital expenditure is emphasised, yet weak demand, stagnant wages, high youth unemployment, compressed welfare spending, and inadequate devolution to states, all persist…This is why, Mr. Chairman, this is what I call an underwhelming budget,” he said.

‘Existential threats facing Indian agriculture’

Alleging that it did nothing to consolidate the sector, Tharoor sought to underline that agriculture was under an “existential threat” in the country and needed to be safeguarded. This, even as he questioned lower budgetary allocations for the sector and schemes under it, which, he said, were “like modern courtships: promises without commitment”.

“It is high time we stop treating agriculture as some issue that will sort itself out, because 46.1 per cent of India’s workforce, and 60 per cent of our population depend on agriculture and allied activities. Despite agriculture contributing 16 to 17 per cent of GDP, it receives only 3 per cent of this Union Budget…this under-investment is all the more alarming given the existential threats facing Indian agriculture today,” he said.

“This sector, vital as it is, is increasingly threatened by climate change and misaligned farming practices…the Fasal Bima Yojana, meant to protect farmers, has failed. Flawed assessments and opaque settlements have reduced compensation to token amounts: one rupee, three rupees, 21 rupees, as your minister himself has acknowledged, turning protection into systemic injustice. Matters are worsened by cuts that leave the scheme at its lowest budget allocation in eight years, fuelling fears that new initiatives will repeat a familiar cycle of announcement without commitment,” he also said.

At a time when farmer distress was deepening, the Budget, he alleged, was silent on revising the PM Kisan Nidhi disbursement. “Hamare kisanon ki aay doguni karne ka waada to aap se poora ho nahin paya, kam se kam unki samman nidhi badha dijiye. Picchle chhah saalon se yeh sirf Rs 6,000 pe hi atki hui hai (You were not able to fulfil your promise of doubling the income of our farmers, at least increase their honorarium. For the last six years, it has remained stuck at Rs 6,000),” he said.

While it spoke at length about “crops from cashews to coconuts”, the Budget, he alleged, ignores one of agriculture’s most persistent concerns, pepper. Once hailed as black gold, the sector is now in distress in my state. “In Kerala, one of the country’s leading producers of pepper, output has fallen from 40,000-plus tons to 30,000 tons, and is projected to decline by a further 28.7 per cent in the foreseeable future,” he said.

“The uncomfortable truth, Mr. Chairman, is that our spice market faces such deep challenges today that if history repeated itself, the British might not even bother looting us for it,” he added.

‘What of gig workers?’

Underscoring that while rural unemployment has stagnated at 3.9 per cent, urban unemployment continues to rise, ending at 6.7 per cent in December last year, with this alleged employment-related “crisis” starting to concentrate “where aspirations and frustrations are colliding in our cities” and schemes dedicated to alleviating the situation having failed.

This, he added, even as the Budget was silent on gig-workers who were the backbone of India’s “new economy”. “And what of gig workers, the backbone of our new economy. There is no mention of them in the budget. Their welfare has been deprioritised at a time when unrest grows over the absence of fairly defined benefits, time-bound claims, and abuse mechanisms and mandatory disclosure of work hours, earnings, and deductions. This silence further weakens the gig workers’ access to Social Security and practice,” he alleged.

Tharoor then spoke of the MNREGA, replaced by the VB G(RAM) G, seeking to underline key structural changes which converted it into a “budget-restricted” scheme from an open-ended one.

“It increased guarantee workdays from 100 to 125, introduced weekly wage payments, but at the same time, it hollowed out the legal employment guarantee. While MNREGA was demand driven, fully centrally funded for unskilled wages, and rooted in decentralised planning, the new Act caps central funding through state wise normative allocations, shifts 40 per cent of the cost, the wage costs, to most states, and allows the scheme to be paused for up to 60 days during the peak agricultural seasons, shrinking the real window of guaranteed work,” he alleged.

“Once a state’s allocation is exhausted, workers’ statutory right to employment effectively ends. This converts an open-ended right space programme into a budget-restricted, centrally rationed scheme, where fiscal ceilings override legal entitlements…it attempts inclusion, but perhaps unintentionally drives technological exclusion. MNREGA trusted the panchayats and gram sabhas to plan work based on local needs and community strengths…one technical failure will mean exclusion without appeal, and work without skill consideration,” he further alleged.

‘Nation can’t grow by exhausting the people who sustain it’

Terming the middle class the “silent shock absorbers” of the economy, Tharoor sought to underline that the Budget failed to alleviate their current situation of “cracking under strain” and borrowing having become “the price of staying afloat” for such households.

“Even as households struggle, the tax burden is quietly shifted onto it. Personal income tax now contributes over half of all direct taxes where the corporate share declines, as I mentioned earlier. And when last year’s budget at least acknowledged middle-class housing stress through the Swamih Fund, this budget offers only silence. Inflation may look subdued on paper, but for citizens, the cost of living has merely been shifted,” he alleged.

“When the state fails to provide cleaner, safe water, and uncontaminated food, households are forced to buy privately what should be public goods, air purifiers, water filters, basic safeguards. This burden is unequal…the privileged can protect themselves, while the poor remain exposed. A nation cannot grow by exhausting the very people who sustain it…,” he said.

‘Can’t afford to treat R&D as an afterthought’

“…the Capex-centric approach appears less like a strategy for inclusive growth, and more like a gamble, that ignores weak demand, joblessness, and the lived economic distress of the ordinary citizen…No nation can develop on slogans or headlines alone. India’s investment in research and development remains stuck at 0.6 per cent of GDP…A country that aspires to be a manufacturing and knowledge powerhouse cannot afford to treat research and development as an afterthought. I would urge the minister to elevate R&D as a national priority,” Tharoor said.

India-US trade agreement ‘overturns every principle of reciprocity’

Adding that he could not omit mentioning India’s new interim trade agreement with the United States, because it had followed the tabling of the budget, Tharoor said it looked less like a free trade agreement and more of a “pre-committed purchase agreement that overturns every principle of reciprocity”.

“How can you speak of a reciprocal tariff of 18 per cent on one side and 0 per cent on the other? At a time when India’s total bilateral trade with the US stands at roughly 130 billion US dollars and we have a trade surplus of only 45 billion US dollars, we have surprisingly promised to buy $500 million worth of American goods over five years. This effectively converts a surplus into a long-term deficit by executive assurance, rather than by market demand,” he said.

“No major economy has ever neutralised its own trade leverage in this manner. While the U.S. continues to impose import tariffs of up to 18 per cent, we have committed ourselves, apparently, according to this joint statement…to impose tariffs up to 18 per cent on Indian exports and we to slash tariffs to near zero levels, open agriculture, dilute data localisation, soften intellectual property safeguards, and even redirect strategic energy imports, especially away from Russia, to meet purchased targets… this is not strategic balancing. It is economic preemption,” he added.

Tharoor alleged that India has “voluntarily surrendered its negotiating power without securing proportional market access”, or policy space in return.

“The government’s claim that India has secured a better deal than China, Vietnam, or other Asian economies, does not withstand scrutiny. While India has obtained a tariff reduction of one or two percentage points from them, no East Asian economy has agreed to deliberately dilute its current surplus with the US through guaranteed purchase committees,” he said.

“In short, Mr. Chairman, the real weakness of this government’s budget lies in its implementation, where rhetoric is not matched by reality,” he added, quoting from Mirza Ghalib, whose couplets are often quoted by senior BJP leaders to take on Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi.

Tharoor said: “….humein maloom hai Jannat ki haqiqat par dil ko behlane ke liye, Ghalib, yeh khayal accha hai… we know the reality behind these claims, we stole promises, these narratives, the modern governance, but they’re not policies granted in outcomes, they’re carefully curated illusions.”