Nirmala Sitharaman says won’t let next generation suffer our hardships | HT interview

The focus of the budget — this year as well as budgets presented by the NDA government in general — is on 2047, the deadline for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s vision of a developed India (Viksit Bharat), finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman explained in an interview on Saturday.

It will not be possible to achieve this by just adopting a narrow sectoral approach, she added. The emphasis needs to be on all sectors, and on everyone, Sitharaman said. On Thursday, she presented an interim budget that continued her government’s focus on capital expenditure (11% growth on a number that has already trebled in four years), listed its achievements on various fronts and its measures aimed at helping key constituencies (such as women and young people), exceeded its fiscal deficit target, and refrained from launching any populist schemes aimed at the summer’s general election. It was a move that many analysts said reflected the government’s confidence that it would return to power.

Also read: HT Interview: ‘India will be the world’s third largest economy in Modi's 3rd term’, says FM Sitharaman

Referring to the interim budget’s statement about her government presenting a road map for Viksit Bharat along with the year’s budget in July, the finance minister said the budget too would focus on the “caste groups” she mentioned: the poor, women, the young, and farmers.

In a wide ranging interview with journalists from HT and Mint, Sitharaman spoke of the structural changes in the rural economy, the process of building big banks, and the need to have a larger conversation on whether the targets of the fiscal responsibility act, drafted in another era, were practical — but she kept returning to 2047 even as she reiterated her government’s achievements over the past 10 years and referred to the lost decade between 2004 and 2014 when the UPA was in power.

In contrast, her government was steadfast in its commitment to reforms, and even rebooted the economy during Covid-19, embarking on a mission of self-reliance. The pandemic was unlike anything anyone had experienced before, the minister said, and there was no clear direction on the policy response to it. Indeed, given the unexpected disruptions the world has seen in the past four years (she didn’t mention it, but her reference was clearly to the geopolitical crises in Europe and West Asia), it is difficult for policymakers, she admitted, which is where a long-term goal, and certitude of top leadership, helps.

In India’s case, that goal is to be a developed country by 2047.

Viksit Bharat is important because the younger generation “should not go through what we did when we were growing up”, Sitharaman said. That’s already changed significantly, she added.The Modi government has empowered citizens of all strata and implemented “Ease of Living” through technology in every sphere of life as against the red tape, policy paralysis, nepotism and corruption of the previous government that ruled for a decade till 2014. “That one decade was completely wasted.”