KERALA is popularly called as god’s own country. She has many specialities. One more speciality added this year is that Kerala has two budgets. Nowhere in the country, there has been the practice of changing the current year budget with the change in the government. However the UDF which has no regard for customary democratic norms has done exactly the same thing in Kerala.

The new (rather supplementary) budget presented by the finance minister Sankaranarayan, who was earlier the convenor of the UDF, is a continuation of the process of undoing whatever good work the LDF government has done. The intentions of the government were clear from several steps it had taken after assuming power. The much-acclaimed white paper has without any qualm of conscience stated the UDF intention to put heavy burdens upon the shoulders of the people. The governor’s address in the Assembly had cemented this fear among the people.

The new budget, in most moderate terms, can be described as anti-developmental and anti-people. It is a shock to the trading community who had extended unstinted support to the UDF in the last elections. It is set to reduce the employment opportunities to the educated and uneducated youth in the state.

Let us now examine a few features of this budget :

The budget has cut short the annual Plan estimate from Rs 3,600 crore allocated by the LDF to Rs 3,015 crore, thus reducing a huge sum of 585 crores from it. It requires no great intelligence to see that it will certainly affect the developmental activities of the state that the LDF had envisaged and started.

Besides this, the budget has reduced a sum of Rs 175 crore from the grant-in-aids to the local bodies’ share of the Plan fund. The LDF government had allocated a sum of Rs 1439 crore to the local bodies while the present budget has revised it to Rs 1237 crore. This will adversely affect the People’s Plan programme. The local bodies will have to trim their developmental activities and plan activities that have already been decided and prepared by the gram sabhas. As was reported earlier in these columns the developmental projects of each panchayat have been discussed in the gramsabhas in accordance with the budget passed by the LDF government and publicised. So, the new budget has virtually backstabbed the People’s Plan.

The total revenue income shown in the LDF budget in February 2001 was Rs 10,833 crore while the present budget shows a revenue income of only Rs 10,626 crore. The white paper of the UDF has shown that by collecting tax arrears a surplus sum of Rs 750 crore could be earned by the state while the alternative proposals presented by the leader of opposition and LDF leader V S Achuthanandan has shown that the surplus could be raised upto Rs 2,250 crore.

The reduction in revenue income by Rs 207 crore will certainly affect the developmental activities of the state. In fact, the UDF is trying to conceal the actual income from the eyes of the people, and thus retarding the development of the state for the sake of the forces that be, which are operating behind the scenes.

Apart from robbing the local bodies a sum of Rs 175 crore, the UDF government is nullifying the decentralisation process. It has allotted a sum of Rs 35 crore, in this budget, as MLA Development fund in tune with the MP fund of the central government. How this is going to affect the economy and society and development of the state is yet to be seen. But from experiences of the disbursement of the MP funds belonging to bourgeois and landlord parties, it is amply clear that these legislators would pretend themselves to be local princes with powers to distribute largesse indiscriminately.

Setting up of two authorities, one for the coastal region and the other for the high ranges, has been proposed in this budget. The allocation for these authorities is made from the sum robbed from the Plan allocation to the local bodies. In short the new budget is aimed at torpedoing the power of the local bodies of the people and disabling these bodies to prepare their own schemes and projects for the growth of their own places. This in effect will gradually destroy the People’s Plan programme.

Another important aspect of this budget is the series of new taxes levied, which will be a great burden to the people of the state. Some of them are listed below :

• A 15 per cent surplus sales tax will be levied on all products except petroleum and alcohol.
• The traders should pay a surplus tax of 1.5 per cent to the government on the sales collection of all products except petroleum products, alcohol, and other products included in the Article 14 of the Central Sales Tax Act.
• A tax will be levied on coffee at the time it is sold on auction.
• 4 per cent tax will be levied on silk sarees.
• The black granite gelly production will have to bear a burden of taxation after the new budget is passed. There will be three-tire tax system depending on the size of the machines. Thus every unit will have to pay a new tax on the basis of the power and efficiency of the machines.
• A special tax will be introduced for the medicines sold from the private medical shops. The printing presses that undertake contract work will have to bear the burden of taxes hereafter.
• A 4 per cent tax is proposed on the branded bun and bread, thus initiating a type of impoverishment on the poor folks who will have to resort to these food items when their children suffer from some disease. The new tax will be an additional burden.
• The taxes levied for the alcohol production in the distilleries will be considerably increased.
• Hereafter, tax returns could be submitted only in papers with Rs 25 stamps.
• The fine for commercial offences is raised from Rs 5000 to Rs 25000.
• Lottery ticket distributors and stockists will have to pay a license fee.

With these heavy burdens on the people, the UDF budget has declared certain concessions to the agricultural income tax payers. However companies are not exempted from paying this tax.

A peculiar feature of the budget is that the salvation measures declared by the UDF in its already notorious white paper are not included in the budget. It is clear from this that they intend to carry out those measures behind the back of legislative assembly. A case in point is the decision to establish an electricity regulatory authority to revise the electricity tariff. The actual hike in electricity charges and bus fare will be declared once the assembly is adjourned.

The UDF manifesto had declared that it would provide employment for 15 lakh young men and women in the coming five years. The natural arithmetic would require the UDF to lay out schemes to provide jobs for at least 3 lakh people this year. However, there is no plan with the government to provide employment for the youth. The LDF had a clear-sighted perspective regarding providing employment. It had promised to provide employment to 12 lakh young men and women by utilising the Information Technology prospects in the state. However, there is no scheme in the UDF hands to develop the IT sector except the tax reduction on the price of the computers. This will not enable the state to tap the IT prospects in the state.

This is a budget with no perspective, direction or orientation. The result of this budget will be total sterility in the field of development. Private sector is time and again hailed by the UDF as the only elixir for salvaging the economic crisis of the state. However, even such measures are not promised in the pro-privatisation UDF budget. Nobody is against utilising private investment for the development of the state. However, what UDF aims at is total privatisation. For this they might be requiring the total destruction of the public sector. Perhaps the UDF and their masters may have something more severe for the people in collaboration with their central masters in the Congress and the BJP. We do not forget one of the first statements of the minister P K Kunhalikutty,. He had said that unprofitable public sector undertakings would be sold out. He was speaking as if he were a Kerala Shourie. We, in these columns, had then asked unprofitable to whom. Perhaps these measures are still brewing in the distilleries of the UDF.

The budget will also hit the rubber cultivators and merchants because they will have to pay the additional sales tax levied by the new "messiah" of peasants and traders. Not a single line is said about improving the lot of the coconut producers and the ills that the coconut cultivation faces in the state. There is no measure to cure the coconut trees of the mandari disease.

This is the first budget in the history of Kerala that does not mention the word sports in it. The minister in charge of sports has been making high-sounding promises to the sports persons of Kerala, but the budget is silent on the sports development.

In addition to the already promised engineering colleges to the state a new college is promised at Perinthalmanna. One fails to understand the immediate necessity of the new college at Perinthalmanna because, a college with all its impoverishment is working at Sreekrishnapuram in Palakkad district which is only about 25 kilometers away from the Perinthalmanna town. Perhaps it is the demand of the education minister whose home town and constituency happens to be Perinthalmanna. Of course this is in tune with their outlook that Kerala is a place to be partitioned and leased out among the UDF ministers

The budgetary proposals for the hike in the sales taxes will lead to an increase in prices. Thus the already impoverished people of Kerala will be further impoverished and this will lead to a calamitous social psychology which may result in anything, crimes, suicides and what not.