The middle class has been taken for granted. The current dispensation, with a Finance Minister who has steadfastly refused to recognise the sweat, blood and tears of a huge number of people, appears least concerned over alienating them. Mr Jaitley goes beyond casting them away as an unwanted lot. Before he does so, he even intends to rob people who are not so rich to give their money to the poor. This is no Robin Hood act that earned mythical support in the forests of Sherwood. This appears a foolish one in the poll scenario.
The middle class comprises essentially honest tax payers because they have so little scope to cheat. The salaried class among them can barely generate a rupee as unaccounted earnings. Maybe that is the reason they have become easy prey to these bizarre machinations by which the middle class and the elderly have been given short shrift. ‘Jai kisan’ has become all too important for the rural vote in next year’s general elections.
The retired people must also be livid with the Long Term Capital Gains. They may be the smallest players in the game and yet they have been investors in equity MFs as a way of generating a retirement income in a country that has no social net for the elderly. Can’t blame them if they feel now – “We wuz robbed.”
By knocking them on the head with a tax on dividends as well as sale of MFs, they will be driven towards the same poverty as the have nots. The taxes they paid in a three-decade plus careers means nothing now. Poor old fools have been hit by a hurricane.
I loved the phrase much quoted after this Budget about some people being too old even to contemplate buying a green banana for fear of not living long enough to see it ripen. And what do the elderly get offered now but Rs 50,000 if they take out medical insurance or pay medical bills. Some consolation this and pray how will they pay the premiums and bills if their MFs and their small holdings in the stock market have been hit by the tax of taxes that was abandoned years ago and makes a comeback only to satisfy the sadism or greed of tax collectors.
A disgruntled middle class was responsible for voting out the Congress and voting in the BJP in 2014. So where does the BJP think those votes will go the next time around now that they have been given a reason to grumble over what has been done to them in the 2018-19 Budget? Seeing a large proportion of life savings wiped out in stocks and MFs cannot be a pleasant experience for many.
They might expect justice in the next Budget that is at least 18 months away only if there is a huge change pf regime or change of outlook. The irony of it all is successive finance ministers, both lawyer-turned-quasi economists, have not just been perceived to be anti-middle class, they may actually be sworn enemies of the middle and working class.
For every middle class voter, there may be two rural countrymen. But they have proved to be the swing factor because there is no real understanding of how the rural voter decides. The more urbanised constituencies were the ones that tilted the scales in favour of the BJP the last time out. Swinging to the socialist end of the pendulum now for a party perceived to be that of the traders and the middle class is an obvious poll ploy. The Gujarat scare may have pushed them here but the calculated gamble may backfire, as we have so often seen.
They suffered the most when demonetisation was ushered in overnight. The superrich and the CEOs didn’t stand in the bank queues, the middle class did.
And got singed too as some elderly among them died from the stress. Hit by high fuel prices – which will probably go higher as the Centre refuses to part with any of its excise cut and the states their VAT on the non-GST item at a time of rising international prices – and inflation creeping higher, the middle class is the worst affected segment of the population since November 8, 2016. They will soon know the extent of the cruel joke played on them with the return of standard deduction as it is only a mathematical sleight of hand.
The hostile intentions have been clear. In the name of raising the lot of the poor, the government only manages to bring the not so rich down so that there can be more millions in this country wallowing in a lower quality of life and lesser standards of living.
The sum total of the Budget betrays a devilishly crafted equalisation plan by which a whole class of people will be brought down to meet their even poorer countrymen in a common plane. Ingenious plotting by a quasi-economist.
