Budget 2015 - 16

Budget season is still far away for most people and even for politicians; not so for babudom and lobbyists.

Come budget day, we have many experts,more business persons and of course politicians of all hues airing their opinions, with media persons with sycophantic deference thrusting a mike at them hoping to get a couple of sound and video bites.

You would hear the same opinions repeated ad nauseam – “Pedestrian budget”, “Nothing in it for common man or industry or agriculture (depending on one’s ideological leanings)”, “FM could have pushed for more reforms” etc. etc.

Its time “We the people” whose money and how it’s proposed to be spent or squandered by the powers that be, took a more active interest in the machinations that go on in the making of the budget.

So, The Fifth Estate proposes to call for suggestions and plans to point to certain goals that we may ask the budget makers to have in focus.

Let’s start with two focus points.


One is “Inequality” and allied to it is the second point, “HDI”.

To remind us what inequality means, here is a picture that might be useful.

Here is a link to a news report in ‘The Hindu’ of 08 December 2014 on “Inequality”.

(http://www.thehindu.com/data/indias-staggering-wealth-gap-in-five-charts/article6672115.ece)