Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu - Photo: Diary Times
Tax free, friendly to all sections, some new schemes, some surprising figures…now this is the gist of every budget.
The second budget of Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu is also similar. …so what’s different?
What is different is that this budget appears to have a vision as seen from the elections. There is a thought of making new things in every field and making every class prosperous, there is a resolve to make them self-reliant, in the background of which there is also the pain of the wounds of disaster.
This budget, which gives something to the poor, women, farmers and employees, can be called a bold budget in view of the weak financial condition of the state.
But how will the dreams and resolutions of prosperity be realized by taking loans after loans and without central help…the real question and challenge remains the same.
Schemes like Mukhyamantri Sukh Shiksha Yojana, Mukhyamantri Sukh Arogya Yojana, building educational institutions for the disabled, opening libraries in villages are initiatives to provide basic facilities of education and health even to the underprivileged in the last line of the society.
There is an effort in the budget to improve the appearance of villages because only this can bring prosperity in this hilly state.
Schemes like declaring support price of milk, sheep-goat rearing incentive scheme and linking 36 thousand farmers with natural farming can prove to be effective in this direction.
When Sukhu became the Chief Minister a year and a quarter ago, the hope was raised that the approach of youth and grassroots leadership would also be new. This approach is reflected in schemes based on new technologies like Artificial Intelligence in sectors like agriculture, energy and tourism etc.
Along with tourism development, environmental protection has been taken care of. The need of the hour is to open vehicle scrapping centers and replace diesel buses with e-buses.
Sukhu government kept talking about not getting proper help for the disaster from the Centre. Although the government had announced long ago to give a package of Rs 4500 crore to the disaster affected people, but it is mentioned in this budget.
Like Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s self-reliant India, in this budget Sukhu has given the slogan of self-reliant Himachal.
The resolve for self-reliance becomes even stronger in times when help is limited. Self-reliance is possible only through prosperity, hence the effort to touch as many sections as possible and to give something is visible in the budget. There are around ten thousand employment opportunities, announcement of payment of arrears along with DA to the employees. If the diet money of police personnel has been increased, it is clear that an attempt has been made to touch those needy people to whom no government has paid much attention.
However, it is not very clear what will be the implementation of all these tempting announcements and what will be the measures for economic self-reliance and prosperity.
When about 70 paise of the rupee is spent on salaries and pensions of employees, repayment of loans and their interest and maintenance of autonomous institutions, then it will not be very easy to give effect to these announcements, but the Chief Minister is confident that the way natural disasters In the same way, we will face this economic disaster boldly.
Of course, the government is talking about increasing the income by more than 22 percent by properly implementing the excise policy and through VAT etc., but this alone is not going to help. More steps for improvement will have to be taken. Central help will also be required.
Therefore, if the Chief Minister is appealing to the opposition, who have been accusing the budget of not mentioning guarantees in the budget, not having a road map to fulfill the announcements and making false promises, to support Himachal in clearing its liabilities and getting its rights, then this is the need of the hour. And if this is possible then it will be a new chapter in politics written on these mountains.
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