A ‘bread and circuses’ budget
New Delhi (AsiaNews) – India’s federal budget for 2008-2009 takes on a populist tinge with the government trying to please everyone, offering “bread and circuses” as the May 2009 elections loom on the horizon. Fr S Nithiya, executive secretary of the National Commission for Justice, Peace and Development of the Bishops’ Conference of India, talks to AsiaNews about the government spending estimates Union Finance Minister P Chidambaram presented last Friday.
In the document virtually every segment of society gets some goodies, from small farmers to the middle class to trade and industry. The budget estimates include price controls on food, measures to tackled inflation and infrastructural investment in the countryside and highway construction.
Loans contracted before 31 March 2007 by farmers with less than two hectares of land will be cancelled, a write-off that will cost 600 billion rupees (US$ 15 billion).
The “sixty thousand crores (600 billion) waiver is just a populist move,” said Father Nithiya. “Who will bear the burden?” he asked. Especially since “taxes too have not been increased for the coming year with a view to the next general elections.” It can only mean “increased taxation in the future” whilst the “immediate beneficiaries” of this scheme will be “the banking institutions who shelled out loans to farmers” in the first place.
Real help for farmers should focus instead on reducing the causes of their poverty, like high fertiliser prices and the lack of water for drinking and irrigation.
“Focusing on loans only shifts responsibility for farmers’ plight and hides questions about the high suicide rate (see AsiaNews, 26 February 2008) among them,” he said.
For the clergyman the loan cancellation plan is a throwback to Ancient Rome when emperors gave the plebes panem et circenses, bread and circuses, to keep them distracted from their daily hardships.
“No positive long term help is extended to farmers,” Father Nithiya said. “Debts are cancelled removing the immediate burden” for short-term electoral goals,” but “it will not prevent future suicides.”
“Economic reforms have opened Indian farmers to global competition and given them access to expensive and promising biotechnology, but they have not necessarily opened the way to higher prices, bank loans, irrigation or insurance against pests and rain; all part to an effective rural development policy,” he explained.
Instead farmers are paying the price of policy that has favoured industry, which has caused serious pollution problems, especially in the country’s waterways.
“In many farming regions there is no drinking water and many wells have run dry,” he said. And “more and more poor people are starving to death.”
For Father Nithiya, “globalisation, the policies of the World Trade Organisation and government neglect have had a devastating impact on farmers” who only have land to support their families.
“It is necessary to improve health care for the poor and rural communities, but there are not enough medical facilities in the countryside. In some cases patients are dying on the way to the hospital.”
“For the Indian Church this budget is not friendly to the poor or to rural communities—waiving loan debts is not a solution. What are needed are infrastructures that allow rural people to lead a dignified life with pride and dignity.”
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