Nirmala Sitharaman brews socialist capitalism cocktail

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Job schemes signal admission of economy not expanding

By Manish Anand

New Delhi, July 24: A few months ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had unveiled PM Kisan Nidhi Scheme. The farmers continue to get ₹2000 each in three instalments annually.

At a press of one button, the Centre sends ₹21,000 crores in the bank accounts of the farmers. The annual cost comes to ₹63,000 crores.

The government has not yet asked the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) for a performance audit. The last such an audit that the CAG had done was for the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS).

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The findings of the CAG audit were numbing. The government in the next 13 years again asked the CAG for a performance audit of the MGNREGS.

Parliament still has not been informed of gains of farmers who each get ₹2000 every four months. Parliament through discussions and utterances of the members of the house sends out the message to the people that the farmers are still in miserable conditions.

Union Minister for Finance Nirmala Sitharaman has now extended the octopus arms of socialism to the capitalist private sector. She unveiled multi-armed PM scheme for employment in the private sector.

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A day before the unveiling of the Union Budget, the Economic Survey had lashed out at the “profiteering” private sector. The survey had said that the private sector saw their profits quadrupling, while they neither created jobs with additional gains nor shared the benefits of the lower corporate tax with the existing employees.

Now, the government will bear the cost of one crore youth in an internship programme. The Centre will sustain the interns with ₹5000 a month dole out.

The internship programme will cost the exchequer ₹60,000 crores. Sitharaman in one announcement has created another PM Kisan Nidhi dole out.

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Additionally, the Centre will foot the bill of a month of salary of the first-time employee, maximum ₹15000 (payable in three instalments). The government seeks to cover 2.1 crore youth in the ambit of this scheme. The cost will annually be over ₹32000 crores.

Van Ilango, a seasoned investment mentor, lamented that the middle class is holding aloft the burden of bloating welfarism like an Atlas. He warned that a day may come when it will be “Atlas Shrugged”.

The almost ₹one lakh crore job scheme unveiled by Sitharaman is also an admission that the economy is without the steam to create employment on its own. This also affirms India’s extended jobless growth economic trajectory.

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About The Author

Manish Anand

Manish Anand is a senior journalist with more than two decades of hardcore reporting on beats such as Prime Minister’s Office, Parliament, BJP, Congress, Planning Commission, NITI Aayog, and scores of Union Ministries.

His past has been with The New Indian Express, The Asian Age/Deccan Chronicle, and The Statesman.

For about 15 years, Manish was also a regular commentator and host for talks on AIR on foreign affairs.

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