Govt committed to bring normalcy to Manipur: Sitharaman

The Centre is committed to bringing normalcy to ethnic strife-torn Manipur, Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman said on Tuesday, assuring all support for the economic growth of the northeastern state. Stating that inequality in India was on a decline and the extreme poverty has been eliminated, she also dismissed Opposition’s criticism of the Modi government’s Make in India scheme, saying it has helped boost the economy.

Replying to discussions on four money bills in the Rajya Sabha, the finance minister said the Manipur budget for FY26 has proposed creation of a ₹500-crore contingency fund for the first time in the state to help in meeting with emerging situations.

Manipur, a border state, has been through crisis for several decades and every government has handed it with that sensitivity, she said, pointing out that discussions in the House were more on the situation in Manipur rather than the state budget.

Responding to the Opposition’s charge that a double-engine government could not resolve Manipur crisis, she said: “There is no way anyone of us will be doing any help to Manipur by pointing a finger at one another.”

Sitharaman said even Congress had a double-engine government – both at the Centre and in Manipur – when the state witnessed its worst economic blockade for 120 days in 2011. She said the Congress’s double-engine had, in fact, “worsened the situation”. “We are, all of us here, committed to get that state back to some normalcy and we want that state to grow and prosper as much as any other state,” she added.

She recollected a “major flare-up” between Kukis and Nagas that hit Manipur during the Congress rule in 1993 (April-December). That led to 750 unfortunate deaths and 350 villages were completely burnt down, she added.

Reacting to uproar created by TMC members during her reply, followed by a walkout, Sitharaman accused them of adopting the tactic of not allowing the minister to answer. “But this House is not the street of Bengal... It’s not any street in Kolkata, where they can scream, shout, pelt stones and run away,” she added.

After discussions and her reply, the House returned the four bills — the budget of Manipur for FY26, the supplementary demands for grants for 2024-25 of Manipur, the second and the final batch of supplementary demand for grants for FY25, and the excess demands for grants for 2021-22 — which were already passed by the Lok Sabha on March 11.

Speaking on inequality, the FM said: “Consumption inequality in rural and urban areas has declined significantly, as reflected by the significant improvement in the Gini coefficient, which is a key measure of income inequality.” For rural areas in 2011-12 it was 0.283, whereas today it is 0.237 only, which means the situation is improving. In urban areas, it was 0.363 in 2011-12, in 2022-23 it improved to 0.314, whereas now in 2023-24 it is 0.284, she said.

According to the World Bank, the Gini index (or coefficient) measures the extent to which the distribution of income or consumption among individuals or households within an economy deviates from a perfectly equal distribution. A Gini index of 0 represents perfect equality, while an index of 1 implies perfect inequality.

Citing a paper published in The Economist magazine, she said that inequality declined over the last decade. The paper, she added, was written “after extensive research” by Surjit Bhalla and Karan Bhasin. “Extreme poverty has been eliminated. That’s what it says. In India, under Prime Minister Modi, extreme poverty has been eliminated,” she said.

Sitharaman also rejected the Opposition’s criticism that the Make in India scheme was not successful. Referring to the flagship Production Linked Incentive (PLI) under the scheme, she said it attracted investments of ₹1.5 lakh crore, generated nearly 9.5 lakh (950,000) employment opportunities, exported goods worth ₹4 lakh crore and saw significant progress in various sectors, including manufacturing of mobile phones.

“Make in India has actually given us good results. We took step after step, after step, to strengthen the manufacturing of this country,” she told the House.

The FM criticised the Congress for taking about seven years in formulating the National Manufacturing Policy (NMP), but failed to implement the same in its remaining three years of rule. Criticising the Congress-led UPA for signing “quick-fix FTAs (free trade agreements)” which “killed” India’s manufacturing, she said, Commerce minister Piyush Goyal is now struggling to get those “hurriedly done” trade deals reviewed.