The two waves of floods in Assam this year have claimed nearly a hundred lives while around 200 animals died in the Kaziranga National Park alone; embankments costing crores have been breached while loss of property belonging to individuals is immense. There is little surprise though for floods are an annual scourge that visits the state and people have virtually resigned themselves to their fate. The cry to declare floods in Assam as a ‘national problem’ is age-old, but it has been a cry in the wilderness; there is little response from those the cry is intended to stir into action.
It is against such an Assam backdrop that Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman presented her record-making seventh Union Budget on the trot in the Lok Sabha earlier this week. She announced that Rs 11,500 crore would be allocated for flood control efforts in Bihar, which, like Assam, is also a flood-prone state. The minister stated that projects with an estimated cost of Rs 11,500 crore will receive financial support under the Accelerated Irrigation Benefit Programme and other sources.
In addition to this, she said that a survey and inquiry into flood control and irrigation projects relating to Kosi will be conducted. Sitharaman also acknowledged that Assam experiences floods every year and promised assistance to the state for flood management and related projects will be provided. She, however, stopped short of quantifying the “assistance” in monetary terms. So, one has to wait and see the scale of the promised assistance. Budgets, it is said, are also an exercise in political economy, and the latest was no exception as the Finance minister loosened the purse strings for Bihar and Andhra Pradesh in particular.
The reasons are not too far to seek; the Janata Dal (U) and the Telegu Desam, which run the governments in Bihar and Andhra Pradesh respectively, are after all the two crutches that the NDA government at the Centre has to lean on for its survival after its below-par showing the last Lok Sabha elections; it was time for them to claim their pound of flesh, and they got it. This could also very well be just the beginning. Such actions threaten to set precedents that can have adverse implications for the future, more so when one has to deal with coalition governments. As was to be expected, the Opposition promptly described the Budget as a “kursi bachao” exercise.
While Bihar and Andhra Pradesh may have got their pound of flesh, the Budget cannot be said to have been kind to the Northeast with the allocation for the Ministry of Development of North Eastern Region being raised by a measly amount of approximately Rs 8 crore from the revised estimate of Rs 5,892.00 crore to Rs 5,900.00 crore, which works out to a crore of rupees for each of the eight states of the region. The budget comprises Rs 2,040.68 crore in revenue expenditure and Rs 3,859.32 crore in capital expenditure. There is, of course, no grudging any state getting more, but the Centre must be seen to be equitable overall when making allocations.
