Professor Satya Narayan Misra in Bhubaneswar, July 30, 2024: The Indian constitution, in Article 112, stipulates that ‘an annual financial statement of estimated receipts will be laid before both houses of Parliament’. Lok Sabha has primacy over the Rajya Sabha in the passage of money bills. Though explicitly not stated, every FM tries to meet many of the expectations encoded in the Directive Principles of state policy to promote socio-economic justice.

Specifically, the duty of the state to raise the level of nutrition (Article 47), provision of early childhood care and education (Article 45), and promotion of the educational and economic interests of SC, ST, and other weaker sections of society (Article 46), living wage for workers are important templates before the FM.

Transcending political differences, every government pays special attention to programs like ICDS started by Indira in 1975 to bring down IMR and MMR, the Poshan scheme to bring down malnutrition among children and anemia among girls, MNREGA started in 2005 to provide 100 days of work to unskilled workers in villages and Anganwadi which are also vested with the responsibility of informal leaning in the age group of 3-6. In 1976, it brought in an amendment mandating the state to minimize the inequalities in income (Article 38(2). With this backdrop, it would be worthwhile to analyze to what extent the present budget has lived up to the expectation of a welfare state, wedded to egalitarianism and distributive justice.

India is presently the fastest-growing economy globally, with 6.8% real growth, outpacing its bete noire China (4.6%) as reported by the IMF. Its capital expenditure as % of its CGE has almost doubled from 12% in 2014 when Mr. Modi took over the baton from Manmohan. Under Modi’s watch, the net inflow of FDI has gone up from $ 2 billion in 2000 to $ 71 billion in 2023. The % NPA in banks which was as high as 10.5%in 2018 % has been brought down to 2%in 2023. This has not happened due to Smith’s ‘invisible hand of the free market’ but due to the conscious public policy of IBC, the introduction of GST, the visible ramp-up in digitization, and further liberalization in FDI provisions. However, these visible neon signs in velvety growth mask massive underperformance in key constitutional expectations for promoting socio-economic justice.

While education has become a fundamental right from the age of 6-14, with massive improvements in enrolment and minimization of gender disparity, early childhood education of nearly 50 million poor children in the 22 lakh Anganwadi remains a dismal cesspool of neglect. The NEP 2020 recognizes this serious lacuna in our existing dispensation for early childhood education of poor children and suggests concrete measures to foster positive learning environments during these years, provide Anganwadi workers with proper training, and improvethe infrastructure of these centers.

In the budget of 2022-23, Nirmala promised to upgrade 2 lakh Anganwadi. Without adding allocation, this remained a pipedream. The allocation for school education allocation in this budget has hardly moved from Rs 72473 Cr to Rs 73008 Cr, with practically no attention to early childhood education.

The track record of malnutrition among children is truly deplorable with nearly 33% suffering from malnutrition and 25% stunted due to persistent malnutrition and poor sanitation around the households where these children live as per the latest NFHS V.Anaemia among adolescent girls has gone up from 53.1% (2015-16) to 57% in 2019-2021. The UNICEF Rapid Survey of Children in 2014 identified that 43.6% of adolescent girls are severely thin, not out of dietary choice but because of the non-availability of an adequate diet.

A research study in Odisha, where the anemia % of 64.3% reveals that this is not due to the non-availability of stock, but due to poor supply chain management and poor application of technology. This also shows how accountability which is the blood of democracy is at very low ebb. Allocation in the much hyped-up Poshan 2 program has gone down from Rs 21523 Cr last year to Rs 21206 Cr. It’s a sad commentary on Prime Minister, Nar4endra Modi’s rhetoric of Anemia Mukt Bharat.

The FM seems to have forgotten the agony gone through by poor people during COVID-19 when the abysmally poor health infrastructure and primary healthcare centers were exposed. The allocation to the Health Ministry has hardly gone up from last year’s allocation of Rs 86175 Cr to Rs 87656 Cr in 2024-25. The allocation to education and health which should have been 6% and 2.5% of the budget has been again pegged at 3% and 1.3% respectively. MNREGA which gives livelihood to nearly 7 crore families has been whittled down from Rs 105000 Cr to Rs 86000 Cr.

It is indeed ironic as the prime thrust of this budget is to create nearly 40 million jobs in the next four years. Quite clearly, adequate nutrition, quality education, and basic health care at affordable cost are the three critical pillars that pave the way for quality employment for about 8 million who seek employment every year. This dichotomy between India’s growth aspiration and development pillars is going to dent seriously the demographic dividend that India is trying to harvest.

The World Inequality Report (2024) how the top 10% of India’s population has improved its share of the national pie from 33% in 1957 to 56% in 2022, while the bottom 50%’s share has come down from 24% in 1957 to 12% in2022. This is not due to an accident of history, but because of conscious public policy which has generously cut down the tax rates of the superrich. Piketty in a research article has brought out how a 2% wealth tax on people with a net worth above Rs 10 crore and an inheritance tax will generate 2.7% of the GDP of India.

This will be enough to fund the critical shortfall in allocation for education and health. The Constitution mandates at Article 39(b) that the State should distribute resources of the community to subserve the common good. Piketty is merely reminding India’s policymakers to put into effect its constitutional mandate of distributive justice. In the din of scaling up India’s wealth and growth, the FM has closed her eyes to the constitutional compulsion of caring more for the bottom 50%. The quest for neoliberalism has sidelined the Constitution’s clarion call for an egalitarian and just society.