Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Monday commenced presentation of the Budget for 2021-22 in the Lok Sabha.
Sitharaman announced that the central government has planned a massive infrastructual push for the poll-bound states of West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, and Assam.
For road projects in poll-bound West Bengal, funds worth Rs 25,000 crore have been allocated. The funds have been assigned for laying down 675 km of National Highway (NH) development.
On the other hand, Rs 3,500 crore and Rs 65,000 crore worth of funds have been allocated for Tamil Nadu and Kerala, respectively.
It is pertinent to mention that West Bengal is slated for assembly polls in a couple of months. The ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) and the opposing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) are locked in a bitter fight over control of the state, which has been seeing appropriation wars all over the social-political and cultural spheres.
In a climate like this, the announcements in the Union Budget 2021, for allocating the funds in central infrastructural projects, is being seen by several political commentators as being laden with electoral connotations ahead of the assembly polls.
The Union Budget 2021-22 is expected to provide relief to the pandemic-hit common man as well as focus more on driving economic recovery through higher spending on healthcare, infrastructure and defence amid rising tensions with neighbours.
As India emerges from the COVID-19 crisis, the ninth budget under the Modi government, including an interim one, is widely expected to focus on boosting spending on job creation and rural development, generous allocations for development schemes, putting more money in the hands of the average taxpayer and easing rules to attract foreign investments.
Sitharaman, who had in her first budget in 2019 replaced leather briefcase that had been for decades used for carrying budget documents with a traditional red cloth 'bahi-khata', had earlier this month stated that the budget for the fiscal year beginning April will be "like never before".
It has to be a vision statement, a roadmap to get the world's fastest-growing major economy back on track.
