Furthermore, the class nature of the various state governments and the Central government is the same. In all likelihood, the state governments are going to utilise this small increase in Central funding to increase the subsidies given by them to corporate houses, instead of increasing their social sector expenditures. As we have discussed elsewhere, various state governments have been competing with each other to give subsidies to corporate houses for setting up projects in their states!

Therefore, it is obvious that combined Central and state government spending on various social sectors is going to take a big hit in this financial year

Actual Cuts to be More

Additionally, as several analysts have pointed out, the government projection for its tax revenues are much inflated. The Centre expects the gross tax revenues to go up by 15.8 percent in 2015–16 BE as compared to an actual increase of 9.9 percent in 2014–15 (see Table 5), even though it expects the GDP to go up by 11.5 percent in 2015–16, the same as in 2014–15. That is highly improbable; in all likelihood, the Centre’s gross tax revenues in 2015–16 are going to be below the target set for the year.³⁴ If that happens, then obviously, the Centre will have to further cut its overall budgetary spending below the budget estimate for this year; since cuts in subsidies to the rich are a no-no, the axe will fall on social sector spending. Therefore, in all probability, the actual spending on social sectors this year is going to be much below the already low spending levels planned for this fiscal.

Table 5: Trends in Tax Revenues, 2013–14 to 2015–16.³⁵ (in Rs crore)

Sector-wise Analysis of Cuts in Social Sector Spending

Let us take a more specific look at the cuts faced by the various sectors/ministries related to the social sectors.

Budgetary Resources Earmarked for Women

This is also known as the Gender Budget. The Gender Budget Statement (GBS), first introduced in Union Budget 2005–06, captures the quantum of budgetary resources earmarked for women by various departments and ministries.

India is one of the world’s worst places to be a woman. Firstly, she may be killed even before being born, or as an infant or a little girl. If she survives that, there is every possibility that as she grows up, she may be molested/raped/tortured by her husband. In India, a crime against a women is committed every 100 seconds: a woman is molested every 7 minutes, raped every 15 minutes (reported cases only, actual are obviously much more), one case of cruelty committed by either the husband or his relatives occurs every 5 minutes, and a dowry death occurs every 65 minutes (all figures for 2013).³⁶ 

And yet, an insensitive government has slashed the gender budget by a whopping 19 percent this year as compared to the Budget Estimates for 2014–15. The total allocation under the GBS as a proportion of the Union Budget has in fact been going down over the last several years; this year, it is only 0.94 percent of the Union budget, as against 1.04 percent last year and 1.55 percent in 2011–12.

Table 6: Budgetary Allocations Earmarked for Women, 2014–15 and 2015–16.³⁷ (in Rs crore)

As far as specific schemes go, although the list of schemes in the GBS is very long, the reality is, most of these interventions are only on paper, as reflected in the fact that they are very meagrely funded—of the 59 schemes meant exclusively for women, as many as 54 schemes have allocations of less than Rs 100 crore! Thus, soon after comimg to power, the Modi government had announced the setting up of ‘One Stop Crisis Centres’ for women across the country to provide assistance to victims of sexual assault—one in each district, 660 in all. This scheme has now virtually been scrapped, with only two crore being allocated for this scheme in Budget 2015–16. The allocation for a 24-hour Women’s Helpline to assist women in distress is a princely one crore! Allocation for construction of shelter homes for single women and destitutes, and Scheme for Assistance to States for Implementation of Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005, has been totally withdrawn. And there is only a meagre allocation of Rs 30 crore for hostels for working women. Prime Minister Modi himself launched the Beti Bachao Beti Padhao Abhiyan in January this year whose declared aim is to end discrimination against the girl child and educate her. However, the scheme gets only Rs 100 crore in this year’s budget, which is a mockery of this important slogan.

The key ministry that looks after women’s welfare is the Ministry of Women and Child Development. The allocation of this ministry in the Union Budget 2015–16 has been slashed by more than 50 percent over the budget estimate of 2014–15.³⁸

Budgetary Outlays for Schemes for Welfare of Children

A nation can be judged by the way it treats its children. On that count, India metes out suffering, neglect and insecurity to millions of its very young. Indeed, India is one of the most dangerous places to be a child. Here are some of the reasons for this statement that may appear surprising to many of our readers:

• We have the highest under-five child mortality rate in the world, with 16.55 lakh such deaths in 2011. More than two million children die every year from preventable infections including measles and tetanus.³⁹

l Around 48 percent of all children below the age of five are stunted, 43 percent are underweight and about 20 percent are wasted.⁴⁰

l India has the largest number of child labourers in the world. While official figures put the number of child workers in the country at around 13 million, a 2011 UNICEF report says that more than 28 million children in India between the ages 5–14 are engaged in child labour.⁴¹  

l More than 8 crore children drop out of school without completing even basic schooling (that is, education up to Class VIII).⁴²

• And as for the girl child, it’s a miracle she survives at all! For all the reasons given briefly in the previous section, the child sex ratio in India (number of girls to a thousand boys) declined from 945 to 914 over the period 1991–2011. The 2011 Census reveals that there are about 70 lakh fewer girls than boys in the age-group 0–6 in the country, implying that millions of female foetuses have been aborted and young girls killed during the past decade.⁴³

Appalling figures. And yet, the government has reduced the total allocations for child oriented schemes sharply by 30 percent in this year’s budget, as compared to last year’s budget estimate. The largest component of the Child Budget is for education of children; that has been slashed by 25 percent. However, from the point of view of child health, the most important scheme the Integrated Child Development Scheme. As the Budget itself puts it, it is meant to be “an integrated package of health, supplementary nutrition and educational services to children up to six years of age, pregnant women and nursing mothers.” Despite the terrible state of India’s children, the government has cut the allocation under this scheme by as much as 54 percent, as compared to 2014–15 BE!⁴⁴

Table 7: Budgetary Allocations for Welfare of Children, 2014–15 and 2015–16.⁴⁵ (in Rs crore)

Resources Earmarked for Dalits and Adivasis

More than six decades after the Constitution outlawed the practice of untouchability and discrimination on the basis of caste, and guaranteed that every citizen shall have equality of status and opportunity, the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes continue to face many forms of untouchability practices as well as social, economic and institutional deprivations. Not only that, they are also subjected to enormous atrocities, ranging from abuse on caste name, murders, rapes, arson, social and economic boycotts, to naked parading of SC/ST women, and being forced to drink urine and eat human excreta.

In the 1970s, the government launched the Scheduled Caste Sub Plan (SCSP) and Tribal Sub Plan (TSP) to ensure the flow of targeted funds from the general sectors in the Central Ministries towards the development of the Dalits and Adivasis. The guidelines under these two programmes clearly state that the allocations for them should be at least in proportion to their share in the total population.⁴⁶ The population share for the Dalits was 16.6 percent and for Adivasis was 8.6 percent according to the Government of India Census 2011. However, the allocations for SCSP and TSP never reached the stipulated norm of 16 percent and 8 percent respectively. In this year’s budget estimates, the allocation for SCSP and TSP has been sharply reduced, by as much as 38–39 percent over the 2014–15 BE. Consequently, the allocation for SCSP has fallen to just 6.6 percent and the allocation for TSP to a lowly 4.3 percent of the total Plan expenditure for 2015–16 (Table 7)!⁴⁷

Table 8: Scheduled Caste Sub-Plan and Tribal Sub-Plan, 2014–15 and 2015–16.⁴⁸ (in Rs crore)

Abandoning the Health Sector to God

The state of health care in the country is dismal. The World Health Organisation (WHO) recommends that countries should allocate at least 5 percent of the GDP for public health services. The advanced countries spend more than this; public health care spending as a percentage of GDP in 27 advanced economies rose from 5 percent to more than 7 percent over the period 1990–2008; while public health care spending in several emerging economies is between 3 to 5 percent of GDP.⁴⁹ In contrast, India’s public health expenditure in India (Centre and states combined) was only about 1.3 percent of the GDP in 2013–14.⁵⁰ Other calculations suggest that even this estimate is on the higher side, as it includes expenditure on water supply and sanitation; excluding this, the public health expenditure of India would probably be just around 1 percent of the GDP.⁵¹ According to the WHO, India ranks 171 out of 175 countries in public health spending, and is ranked even below the sub-Saharan countries.⁵²

This has forced citizens to bear the brunt of health spending. India has amongst the most privatised health systems in the world—households undertake nearly three-fourths of all the health spending in the country (72 percent), public spending accounts for just 28 percent.⁵³

Table 9: Budgetary Allocations for Health, 2014–15 and 2015–16.⁵⁴ (in Rs crore)

*Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homoeopathy

Because of this low level of public spending, India’s health system is in “crisis”, warn the editors of The Lancet, one of the world’s most respected medical journals. India has not succeeded in controlling many infectious diseases, including tuberculosis, malaria, kala azar, filariasis, dysentry, typhoid, hepatitis and Japanese encephalitis. Malaria alone kills nearly 2 lakh people in India every year. Around 3 lakh people die of TB every year in the country, nearly 1000 a day. According to the WHO (2008), of the total number of deaths due to disease in a sample of 192 countries across the world, India accounted for nearly one-fourth of the deaths due to diarrhoea, more than one-third of the deaths due to leprosy and more than half of the deaths due to Japanese encephalitis. Of the seven million children who died before the age of five in 2011 in the world, one-fourth of these child deaths (1·8 million) took place in India. The bulk of these deaths are preventable, with an appalling one-third of the deaths being due to pneumonia and diarrhoea alone. India also accounts for one-fifth (56,000) of the 287,000 maternal deaths in the world in 2010, according to a UN report. Even as India has failed to tackle these long standing health challenges, it is also faced with another epidemic, of chronic diseases (like cardiovascular diseases, mental health disorders, diabetes and cancer). More than 50 percent of the deaths in India occur due to chronic diseases, with cardiovascular diseases being a major contributor. As a Lancet study points out, it is possible to address this challenge too, many inexpensive strategies are available, but again their implementation would require strengthening the public health system.⁵⁵

Despite this appalling situation, the Union Budget 2015–16 has cut the already low allocations for the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare by 16 percent, or about Rs 6000 crore (from Rs 37965.7 crore in 2014–15 BE to Rs 32,068.2 crore in 2015–16 BE).⁵⁶

Accelerating Commercialisation of Education

The state of India’s education system is alarming, to put it mildly. The Twelfth Plan (2012–17) admits that even after three years of the passage of the Right to Education Act which is supposed to guarantee free and compulsory education to all children in the age group 6–14, the drop-out rate at the elementary level is still as high as 42.39 percent!⁵⁷

But this is just one aspect of the terrible state of education in the country. Seven decades after independence, the conditions in a majority of the schools are so bad that it is a “national shame”. More than 50 percent of the 8.4 lakh primary schools in the country are single, or at best, two teacher schools. And a staggering 70 percent schools have three or less than three teachers. More than 1 lakh primary schools in the country are single classroom schools (or were functioning in the open, without any classrooms), and a whopping 64 percent of the primary schools (5.3 lakh schools) function with three classrooms or less. What must be the quality of education being imparted to students in schools where a single teacher is teaching two or more than two different classes in a single room!

An official survey of 2011 found that: a whopping 21 percent of all elementary schools did not have functional drinking water facilities; 40 percent of the schools did not have usable toilet facilities; nearly 60 percent elementary schools were not electrified; 49 percent schools did not have libraries; and so on.⁵⁸

And yet the allocations for education in the Budget 2015–16 have been slashed by as much as 16.5 percent as compared to the 2014–15 estimates! The SSA is the main scheme of the Central government for implementing the Right to Education Act and universalising education. This scheme is to be fully funded by the Central government. And yet, the allocation for this scheme has been cut by 22 percent—implying that the government is not even interested in putting all out-of-school children in school! The Mid-Day Meal Scheme is another very important scheme for elementary education that is supposed to be fully funded by the Central government. The allocation for this too has been chopped, by 30 percent. The country’s ruling classes are not even willing to spend money on providing a decent nutritious meal once a day for the country’s children!

Table 10: Budgetary Allocations for Education, 2014–15 and 2015–16.⁵⁹ (in Rs crore)

Drinking Water and Sanitation: Swachh Bharat Mission

The Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM) is one of the most heavily publicised programs of the Central government, endorsed by the Prime Minister himself. It includes both the National Rural Drinking Water Programme (NRDWP) and Swachh Bharat Abhiyan (SBA). It has both a rural and an urban component.

While the entire BJP political leadership, from the Prime Minister to the Finance Minister, have been harping on ‘Clean India’, the government is simply not willing to fund the Swachh Bharat Mission. It has cut the budget for the SBM by more than half!⁶⁰

Table 11: Budgetary Allocations for Swachh Bharat Mission, 2014–15 and 2015–16.⁶¹ (in Rs crore)

Rural Development

As per Census 2011, nearly 83 crore people in India are living in rural areas, and constitute about 69 percent of the total population of the country. Therefore, all-encompassing development of rural areas is crucial for development of the country.

The BJP had declared in its election manifesto for the 16^th Lok Sabha elections that the government would focus on improving village infrastructure. But like its other promises, this too has been buried and forgotten. The finance minister has in fact reduced the total allocation for the Ministry of Rural Development (MoRD) by 12.5 percent.

Table 12: Budgetary Allocations for Ministry of Rural Development, 2014–15 and 2015–16.⁶² (in Rs crore)

The most important programs under the MoRD are the Indira Awas Yojna (IAY), the National Rural Livelihood Mission (NRLM), Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojna (PMGSY) and the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA). The Union government is seeking to transfer the IAY and the NRLM to state governments, and so allocations for both these schemes has been slashed by nearly 40 percent.

The flagship program of the MoRD is the MNREGA. On paper at least, this program, that is legislatively supposed to be fully funded by the Centre, has escaped the steep cuts that have been made in social sector spending of the Central government in the 2015–16 budget. The outlay for this program in the Budget 2015–16 has been pegged at Rs 34,699 crore, 2 percent more than the allocation for 2014–15 (a decline in real terms).

However, the fact of the matter is, even in 2014–15, the fund allocation for MNREGS was inadequate to meet the declared objectives of this act. The states had projected an estimated 278 crore person-days of work for 2014–15, amounting to an estimated cost of Rs 66,000 crore. The Ministry of Rural Development too had accepted this figure. But the Finance Minister allocated only Rs 34,000 crore in the budget for 2014–15.⁶³ Consequently, in 2014–15, MNREGS was able to provide only 219.72 crore person-days of employment to 4.78 crore households, which works out to an average wage employment of 46 person-days a year—much less than the 100 days of employment guaranteed under the MNREGA.⁶⁴ Furthermore, there are a very large number of households—probably around 20 percent of rural households—who desire work but are unable to get employment under this Act. (NSS data show that  around 19 percent of rural households sought work but did not get employment under the MNREGS in 2011–12—that year MNREGS provided 211.4 crore person-days of employment to 5 crore households.)⁶⁵

Secondly, even for providing this many person-days of employment (which itself is quite low, and hence a violation of the MNREGA, as the Act guarantees 100 days of employment to all people who desire work), the funds provided by the Centre proved inadequate and the states paid out Rs 6000 crore from their own funds. Therefore, even if the Centre wants to maintain MGNREGS at the same (inadequate) level as last year, the minimum outlay it should have provided is Rs 46,000 crore (consisting of Rs 34,000 crore plus Rs 6000 crore arrears plus Rs 6000 crore shortfall that caused the arrears in the first place); the fact that it has not done so but kept the provision at roughly the same level as last year therefore implies, in actuality, a huge cut, of 32 percent!⁶⁶

Allocations for Food Security

This is yet another important programme whose allocations have not been cut by the Central government in Budget 2015–16, at least on paper.

Table 13: Budgetary Allocations for Food Secirity, 2014–15 and 2015–16.⁶⁷ (in Rs crore)

Even within the frame of the National Food Security Act, these allocations are not enough. According to the Government of India, as of now the Act is being implemented only in 11 states, that too partially. Therefore, a full roll-out of the Act would require considerable more budgetary support as compared to the food subsidy bill in 2014–15. However, Jaitley has increased the food subsidy budget by only Rs 2000 crore for this year, implying that the government is not anticipating any increase in the quantum of grain to be distributed through the PDS this year (and is assuming that grain would be procured at the same prices as last year).⁶⁸

Actually, as we have discussed elsewhere, the National Food Security Act is a very inadequate act. It only partially addresses the huge problem of mal / under-nutrition in the country.

• Firstly, the Act provides the poor only starvation foodgrains. While the Indian Council for Medical Research recommends that an adult requires 14 kg of foodgrains per month and children 7 kg, the bill restricts the entitlement to only 5 kg per person per month!

l Secondly, the Act provides only for cereals, with no entitlements to other basic food necessities such as pulses and edible oil required to combat malnutrition—whose prices have soared in recent years.

l Thirdly, the Act does not provide even this limited coverage to all the poor—it expands the percentage of the population that would be provided subsidised foodgrains through the PDS to 67 percent, but as has been pointed out by economist Utsa Patnaik, 75 percent of the rural population and 73 percent of the urban population are unable to access the minimum recommended 2200 / 2100 calories.

• Even states like Tamil Nadu and Chhattisgarh have better food security acts. Thus, for instance, Tamil Nadu has a universal public distribution system, wherein each and every family, whether below the poverty line or not, is entitled to 20 kg rice free of cost. The PDS in Tamil Nadu also supplies other essentials like wheat, sugar, kerosene and tur dal at subsidised rates.⁶⁹

The BJP had in fact criticised these inadequacies of the National Food Security Act in the debate in Parliament when this Act was being passed. Arun Jaitley had probed: “are we substantially expanding the right over what existed prior to this Bill being brought in? Are we substantially increasing the outlay? The answer is ‘no’ …” Murli Manohar Joshi had even moved an amendment demanding that “every person … shall be entitled to 10 kg of foodgrains, two and a half kg of pulses and nine hundred grams of cooking oil per person per month.” The BJP election manifesto for the elections to the 16^th Lok Sabha had promised “Universal Food Security”, saying that it is integral to national security.⁷⁰ However, after coming to power, the BJP has made a complete U-turn on this issue too.

Closer Look at Other Cuts in Social Sector Expenditures

 Other social sectors have had to bear even sharper cuts in their budgetary outlays (Table 14). The Minister for Panchayati Raj has virtually been made jobless, with allocations for this ministry reduced to near zero. The allocation for the Ministry for Water Resources and River Development—that looks after another of Prime Minister Modi’s pet themes, river rejuvenation—has also been reduced by a third. The only river that the government is interested in is the Ganga; even this has not been given an allocation from the budget, instead, Rs 2100 crore from the National Clean Energy Fund has been diverted for the ‘National Ganga Plan’. Other rivers can continue to die …

Table 14: India’s Budget, 2014–15 and 2015–16:

Reduction in Budget Expenditure of Social Sector Related Ministries.⁷¹ (in Rs crore)

Yet, No Cuts in Defence and Police Expenditures

The squeeze in Central government spending has not affected the government’s spending on the military and police—they have remained at the same high level as last year in real terms. While the total social sector expenditures of the Central government fell by 15.6 percent in 2015–16 over the previous year’s budget estimates, the military expenditure rose by 8.7 percent and expenditure on the police by 4.5 percent.

The official military expenditure of the government of India is projected at Rs 3.1 lakh crore for 2015–16 (includes pensions). The actual military budget, or the unofficial military budget, is more than this, as a significant part of the budgets of the Department of Atomic Energy and the Department of Space (the former is responsible for making nuclear weapons, the latter for the missile programme, but no separate provision is made for either of those two expensive programmes) too should be included while calculating the country’s total military expenditure. Just the official military budget for 2015–16 is 17.4 percent of the total government expenditure, and is 31 percent more than the Centre’s combined spending on all social services (excluding food subsidy)—Rs 236,722 crore.  

Table 15: Budgetary Allocations for Military and Police, 2014–15 and 2015–16.⁷² (in Rs crore)

Likewise, the Centre’s outlay on internal security, that is, police, is Rs 62,125 crore. Add this to the military budget, and the total—Rs 372,205 crore—is more than the total Central spending on all social services, including food subsidy—Rs 362,195 crore.

Police is also a state subject, and the states too spend heavily on police

One can debate whether this or that head of expenditure that is included within the broad categories of defence and police should be called as expenditure on external security or internal security. For instance, a large part of the army is now deployed within the country, for internal security; while the Border Security Force, included in police expenditure, is also used to defend the country’s borders.

The protests within the country against the pro-corporate and anti-people policies of the government are increasing, and the government is increasingly deploying the police and even the military to repress these protests. There seems to be no shortage of funds for this.

The BJP—Twin Brother of UPA

To conclude, the Budget 2015–16 is not only a continuation, but also an acceleration of the neo-liberal policies being followed by the previous UPA government. Since 1991, ever since India began globalisation and opened up the economy to foreign multinationals, successive governments at the Centre have been running the economy solely for the profit maximisation of giant foreign and Indian corporations. The divisive, communal agenda being pursued by the Modi government is actually only a cover, to disguise its real economic agenda of running the economy solely for the profiteering of big business houses:

• transferring lakhs of crores to foreign and Indian business houses in the name of promoting GDP growth;

cutting welfare expenditures on the poor—whose aim is to provide the bare means of sustenance to the poor at affordable rates—in the name of containing the fiscal deficit, and privatising and handing over these services to private corporations for their naked profiteering.

In pursuing this neoliberal agenda, the country’s ruling political class, that is, the political parties that dominate the Indian Parliament, the bureaucrats, the country’s leading intellectuals, and the big corporate houses, are actually wilfully and deliberately trashing the socialist vision of our nation’s founding fathers embedded in the Directive Principles of our Constitution: