Union Budget 2025: Modi Govt Admits Economy in Dire Straits

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FM Nirmala Sitharaman & PM Narendra Modi Image credit X.com

FM Nirmala Sitharaman & PM Narendra Modi Image credit X.com

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Nirmala Sitharaman Proposes Stimulus Package in Union Budget

By Manish Anand

New Delhi, February 2: Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s eighth Budget is by all accounts a desperate measure to save sinking economy. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has helmed India with low economic growth for over a decade.

From staring at media persons when asked why the middle-class stress not addressed by the Modi government, the ruling dispensation has bent significantly to appease the large mid-income group in shadow of the Delhi Assembly elections.

Sitharaman proposed a basket of proposals with tax cuts at the centre stage to please the middle class. A day before she presented the Budget, the Economic Survey 2025-26 amplified already well-known fact that the corporate profiteered from tax cuts while wages stagnated.

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The Economic Survey indeed didn’t state that the wages not just stagnated but they went down. The street tells the story of stress.

Sitharaman may not be helping the middle-class with tax cuts. She may rather be making a desperate attempt to save the economy. Her proposals of tax cuts and consumption boosts should just be seen as a stimulus package to stimulate the economy.

Former Finance Minister P Chidambaram has the authorship on often stated quote that the “Indian economy can grow at around four per cent even if there is no government in the place”.

Well-known economic journalist M K Venu in a post on X claimed that the Union Budget 2025 is essentially making a case of GDP growth of five to 5.5 per cent. The Reserve Bank of India is more sanguine with projections of six to 6.5 per cent.

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Aspirational India’s dream of growing at eight per cent and above is now confined to the realm of the past. Clamour for government-assisted livelihoods in the form of freebies is a loud statement on the state of the economy.

The Financial Times quoted Madhavi Arora, chief economist at Emkay Global Financial Services, saying that “the focus of the budget has, basically, come in consumption via taxation cuts to support lower income and middle income segments of society”. She reasoned that “the pain point has been very visible for lower income and middle-income segments of society.”

Fully occupied guest houses and hotels in Delhi with Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders also give credence to talk of the town that the Modi-led outfit is making an extraordinary effort to win Delhi elections. The ‘Brand Modi’ shine is a shade pale for not winning Delhi Assembly elections yet.

A prominent BJP candidate in the Delhi elections had been telling the people in his constituency that the Budget would bring great relief to the middle-class. That is, in fact, the tale of the Union Budget.

(Opinion expressed in the article solely belongs to author)

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