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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Health Budget Could Have Been About People, But Now It's About Markets -Ravi Duggal

Health Budget Could Have Been About People, But Now It's About Markets -Ravi Duggal

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published Published on Feb 10, 2018   modified Modified on Feb 10, 2018
-TheWire.in

The Budget speech pitch of ‘Swastha Bharat’ as ‘Samridha Bharat’ is deception, because the allocation for realising that is missing.

Each year when the Budget is tabled in parliament, there is excitement and expectations. Should we say this used to be? Things have changed dramatically over the years.

In the good old days, during the Budget session, we would wait excitedly to know about the price hike in petrol, diesel and kerosene. Now this happens each day and in recent months gradually the price of petrol and diesel has increased to an all-time high and there are no protests.

Grudgingly people accept, hoping that in the weeks ahead this may reduce. So budgets no longer excite. They are a mere public relations exercise, where the incumbent government and media compete with each other to come up with fanciful and creative headlines, though no doubt also useful information and analysis.

But the Budget is politics that underlines the government’s policy commitments. In every Budget speech, there are a number of headline-catching statements which are then hotly debated in panel discussions, on the media and even on the streets. While in the good old days, budgets balanced their commitments between people and markets, in recent years we see an increasing shift in budgets being focused on markets and the private sector.

While civil society’s main concern is with regard to the impact on prices and taxes on their income and how their spending capacities are affected, this too is now being done outside the Budget. The Goods and Services Tax Council takes decisions for taxes on commodities and services, and a new direct tax code will soon take charge of income taxes. So then what remains of interest to civil society in the Budget?

Increasingly, allocations for social sectors like health, education, food and social security and other welfare programmes are beginning to matter and draw increasing attention of citizens and the media.

At the national level, these account for over one-fourth of the Budget, but at the state-level over-two fifths. This implies that for these sectors, then, the state budgets matter much more as the bulk of resources for these sectors are with the states – and more so post the 14th Finance Commission which hiked the share of states in devolved taxes, and after the death of the Planning Commission, a number of planned schemes and centrally-sponsored schemes have been undermined.

At present, the prime minister’s office is at the centre of such decision-making, with some of its thinking being done by the NITI Aayog. The line departments have been sidelined completely and have a very small say in key decisions pertaining to their policies and budgets. Lets illustrate this with the example of the health sector in the context of the 2018-19 Budget launched on February 1, 2018.

Please click here to read more.

TheWire.in, 6 February, 2018, https://thewire.in/221309/health-budget-2018-markets-nhrm/


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