The President’s address to a joint session of the two Houses of Parliament, which customarily marks the inauguration of the Budget Session, turned out to be an exhausting compendium of clichés which might have left many even on the Treasury benches intrigued as to its utility. This is a speech which the President signs on the dotted line, as it were. The Rashtrapati has no leeway about veering from the text approved by the government. And thus the show on Tuesday turned out to be a monumental clerical foray with few relieving features.
The President’s address typically adumbrates key elements of government policy and lists signal achievements. As a curtain-raiser to the direction of future government thinking, there was little on offer. Possibly the most promising element in this direction was the suggestion that the government was committed to “mutually respectful ties” with Pakistan in creating an environment for cooperation and combating cross-border terrorism.
And on the side of attainments of the government, the President noted that his government’s “concerted efforts to tackle the menace of black money” had begun to yield results. It is easy to visualise an army of sceptics wagging their finger. Another achievement cited is that November 26 has now been declared “Constitution Day”.
“Sab ka saath, sab ka vikas” remains the government’s philosophy, it was sought to be emphasised. By now this “philosophy” has begun to acquire all the halo of a mumbo-jumbo chant with no end in sight. By way of elaboration the President noted that “sab ka vikas (the progress of all)” meant that the backward sections of society would be “genuine stakeholders in progress”.
With Indian agriculture in crisis and the farm sector reeling — in Maharashtra alone there have been more than a hundred farmer suicides since January this year which a BJP MLA recently described as a “fashion” among farmers — one may wonder where the “sabka vikas” slogan is truly headed.
But new slogans continue to be coined. The President’s address spoke of “Garibon ki unnati, kisanon ki samriddhi (the progress of the poor, prosperity for the farmer)”, and “Yuvaon ko rozgaar (employment for the youth)”. The “garib”, the “kisan” and the “yuva” are not likely to be amused when they weigh their reality against these claims that mock.
We should just be thankful that the recent diktat of the HRD ministry to Central universities to hoist the national flag prominently has not yet been flagged as a signal achievement of the Modi government. Here’s a sobering thought as Parliament embarks on its Budget Session. The size of the Central Budget will have grown just by a third in the last five years while it had more than doubled in the previous five.
