Demonetization was the backdrop of the Union Budget presented to Parliament on February 1. It may have been one persuasive consideration in hastening Apple’s decision to open a manufacturing hub in Bangalore for its iPhones. Apple founder and CEO, Tom Cook, is on record as saying that demonetization would be beneficial for India and take its economy forward in the long-term. The drive towards a cashless economy is a step in the right direction, he said. Entrepreneurs and company heads in general have reacted positively to the major goals of Finance Minister Arun Jaitley’s Budget.
Piruz Khambatta, Chairman of the Confederation of the Confederation of Indian Industry’s committee food processing industry and Chairman and Managing Director of Rasna Pvt Ltd told a TV channel that while the budget would not produce a tsunami, it held the promise of boosting consumption, especially in rural India. According to Sunil Duggal, Chief Executive at the packaging goods firm, Dabur India Ltd, rural India’s consumption had been slowing over the past two years, hence he detected the budget’s goal to stimulate consumer demand at the bottom of the pyramid. The budget may not have produced the big bang but its cumulative measures should improve the quality of life in rural India.
The increase in the agriculture outlay too was to ensure that farmers should reap the benefits. The increase in funds for the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme reached a new high of Rs 8000 crore. The planned investment in more and improve roads is to provide better access to markets, especially important this year, with its abundant monsoon and noticeable upswing in agricultural produce. The announced Rs 8,000 crore dairy fund ‘will help add milk processing capacities, increase milk production and distribution capacities, besides strengthening the rural economy and enhancing dairy farmers incomes,’ said Vivek Nirmal, Joint Managing Director, Prabhat Dairy. India, once a milk deficit country is now the world’s largest, which account for the explosive growth of India’s dairy industry.
Kannan Sitaram, Operating Partner in private equity firm India Equity Partners accepts that the budget targets will help income generation for those at the bottom of the pyramid. ‘There is clarity in what the FM is doing for the economy. And what is good for the economy is obviously good for companies selling soaps, and shampoos,’ he said.
Complementing this will be the boost to urban communities across the country, thanks to the lowering of the personal income tax rate which will put around Rs 20,000 crore into consumers’ pockets and will surely be recycled into demand and increased consumption. Increased infrastructure expenditure is likely to spur job creation.
Mr Jaitley has taken measures to promote ease of doing business in India; he has been wise to abolish the Foreign Investment Promotion Board, long due for the bureaucratic scrapheap of form-filling, endless filing and minuting and delay so characteristic of licence and permit raj.
Swachi Bharat has been a commendable scheme to improve public health, including garbage collection and disposal and improved sanitation. There have, however, been a number of notable misses in the budget. No mention was made to aquaculture and the plantation sector. The Railways merited only cursory reference, which is surprising since it is by some distance still the most popular form of mass transport in the country. The Railway budget used to be the curtain-raiser for the Union budget, but is now incorporated in the latter. Railways should have been given greater space and time in Mr Jaitley’s speech.
Defence capital expenditure was given a modest raise, somewhat surprising in view of the existential challenges facing India. The expectation is that this shortfall will be compensated by large ‘M ake in India’ projects.
Importantly, the captains of Indian industry were unanimous in their thumbs up to the abolition of Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB) and transparency in the funding of political parties. ‘The economic reform agenda continues at a rapid pace, with the abolition of the FIPB …The budget … with a broad strategy, put in place the mechanisms and institutions for the future of the country including through digitalization and formalization of the economy,’ said Naushad Forbes, President of the Confederation of Indian Industry. As the CII stands in the front line of wealth generation and much else, therefore to Naushad Forbes belongs the last word.
Is West Bengal haven for terrorists?
This is the disturbing question asked at an Indo- Bangladesh-conference in Delhi. Successive speakers from Dhaka alleged that Islamic fanatics – the principal source of jihadi terrorism – have moved across the border into Indian West Bengal to shelter and recoup for operations in Bangladesh and even in India itself. Jihadi operatives have been run to ground – more by accident than clever police work in Burdwan, Malda and Murshidabad districts where training camps and arms dumps have been discovered following pressure from national intelligence agencies, which means, in other words, by the central government. Until then, the maverick State Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee was much given to brushing aside this and related issues as part of what she deemed a ‘conspiracy’ against her government. She never appears to be at peace unless she is at war – generally with the Union government in Delhi.
Outside West Bengal, she is uniformly perceived as a leading member of the entertainment industry, with her unbridled tongue and petulant dramas. Her behavior waxes and wanes, and is mostly unpredictable.
Bangladesh is more important to India today than ever before. The Awami League government of Sheikh Hasina has been extremely cooperative in its dealings with the Government of India on sharing intelligence on jihadi terrorism, because of which Indian intelligence agencies have snared substantial numbers of jihadi terrorists planning to bomb targets across India.
A major issue between the two countries, pending since 1972 when Bangladesh was established following its war of liberation, was ironing out of anomalies of their border, where Bangladesh enclaves were placed in India and Indian enclaves, likewise, in Bangladesh. Prime Minister Narendra Modi gave this issue his personal attention and an irritant was removed, allowing space for a warm and trusting relationship to grow. Under previous Bangladesh administrations relations with India were fraught, and jihadi groups were given sanctuary in the country and smuggled into India – often with Pakistani cooperation.
The one remain problem now pertains to sharing the waters of the Teesta River, which flows downstream from India into Bangladesh. Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has stalled a settlement, one possible reason being her fractious ties with Delhi. Petty spite appears to have got the better of consideration of the national interest.
US Nobel laureate calls on India to fulfill potential
David Jonathan Ross visited India in the mid-1990s and was bowled over by the warmth of his welcome. In 2004, he shared the Nobel Prize for Physics with his doctoral student Frank Wilczek and with Hugh Politzer. He has visited Calcutta more than once and told a local reporter that he ‘loved this city. I find it engagingly exciting, with its sound, tastes and culture – warts and all.’ It was once home to Jagadish Bose, Satyen Bose, C.V. Raman. Professor Gross wondered why India, which had invented the zero, had lost its scientific and mathematical edge, a question he put to one of his young audiences. Their answer, overall, was political indifference, bureaucratic meddling and lack of adequate funding. Thugh taken aback by the general response, Professor Gross told them to work and not whinge.
Address and interacting with the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) in Mumbai led eventually to the founding in Bangalore of the International Centre for Theoretical Sciences (ICTS). The moving spirits behind the venture were Spenta Wadia, a student of Gross and Professor Gross himself. It has brought together physicists, astronomers, cosmologists, biologists and mathematicians., eliciting the following comment from Gross who is Chairman of its Advisory Board: ‘ICTS is a marvellous project that’s been nurturing talented young scientists in the field of theoretical physics. This new breed do scientific work and don’t complain,’ he said.
Now that India had developed a solid base in theoretical it was time it groomed its huge pool of young talent for experimental physics. However, Professor Gross was dismayed by the bureaucratic impediments and political wire-pulling that goes on in science establishments. It made little sense to place science institutions under the authority of civil servants. Professor Gross vented his criticisms to Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the recent Vibrant Gujarat summit which a number of international Nobel laureates attended.
‘India’s biggest asset is the human resource, yet only four out of 10,000 get to work in the field of science and technology. The figure is 80 in the US and 20 in China,’ he said. A truly disturbing statement which the Prime Minister, hopefully, will rectify.
