Budget unconnected to ground realities, says Yechury

New Delhi: CPI-M [Communist Party of India (Marxist)] leader Sitaram Yechury, on Thursday, said that Finance Minister Arun Jaitley's 2018-19 budget was unconnected to ground realities.

In his reaction to Prime Minister Narendra Modi government's last full budget before the next Lok Sabha election, Yechury said, "It is a textbook exercise in post-truth".

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What Finance Minister said:

• Indian economy has performed very well since our Govt took over in may 2014, It is now the seventh largest in the world.
• India now a $2.5 trillion economy and firmly on path to achieve 8 per cent plus growth soon.
• Indian Exports grew at 15 per cent in 2017-18.
• We will work to double farmer income by 2022.
• From ease of doing business, our government has moved to ease of living for the poor and middle class.
• We will focus on farm and non-farm employment for farmers.
• Three major projects Ujjawala yojana, Saubhagya Yojana and Awas Yojna have provided crores of free LPG, power to 4 crore families and has worked towards providing interest rate relief to mid-level sections.
• We have transformed the nation into the fastest growing economy in the world.
• We have controlled stent prices.
• The focus is on low-cost farming, higher MSP. Emphasis is on generating farm & non-farm employment for farmers.
• I am very happy to announce that minimum support price has been set at 1.5 times the production cost for kharif crops.
• India’s Direct Benefit Transfer scheme is a global success story.
• Agri-Market Development Fund with a corpus of 2000 crore to be set up for developing agricultural markets.
• Will focus on agriculture and rural economy, health, infra, senior citizens.
• Hope to grow at 7.2 per cent-7.5 per cent in the second half of 2017-18.
• Allocating natural resources in a more transparent manner, there is a premium on honesty now.
• Government led by PM modi has implemented a series of fundamental structural reforms.
• Allocation in for Ministry of Food Processing is being doubled; specialised agro-processing and financial institutions to be promoted by the government.
• National Health Protection Scheme to cover 10 crore poor and vulnerable families, benefiting approximately 50 crore people.
• Airport capacity to be increased by five times.
• Demonetisation was received by honest tax-payers as ‘Imaandari ka Utsav’.
• The Govt is proposing changes in refixing salaries of Members of Parliament. Law will provide automatic revision of emoluments of the MPs every 5 years indexed to inflation.