Karnataka Budget 2020: Many schemes, allocations only for political suitability

Economically unviable

Right in the first few minutes of the presentation of his seventh budget speech the Chief Minister reiterated his fustian commitment to the farmers and agriculture as the fundamental pursuit. But as expected there was no separate ‘budget for agriculture’, why has that idea fizzled out?

Today Karnataka is undergoing a critical phase under the constraints of flood and drought relief on one hand, and critical financial position on another.

This is compounded by Centre’s reduction of Rs 8,887 crore under tax devolution and Rs 3,000 crore under the GST compensation. Therefore, even though the Chief Minister committed primacy for the agriculture sector, the budget document does not substantiate it fully. Rs 4,000 per farmer is to be given as supplement to the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Scheme and approximately Rs 2,600 crore is allocated to benefit 41 lakh farmers. The farmers will be given Kisan Credit Cards and the budget papers do not make any reference to the connection of these with the earlier KCC or its functioning.

The crop insurance scheme gets Rs. 900 crore as provision but everyone knows that here the premium far exceeds the indemnity paid to the farmers benefitting the insurance agencies.

Incentivising farmers by providing Rs. 10,000 per hectare for growing small millets can open a Pandora’s box as we have little reliable data and timely availability of the data about the crops grown. Soil health cards and mobile agricultural health clinics are mentioned. The Soil Health Card even under the Land Resource Register provides only information about nutrition deficiency but does not give any quantum of such deficiency.

That puts the farmer in dilemma about the dosages of fertilisers to be utilised. Giving horticulture status of an industry raises many doubts and operational difficulties. The horticultural sector also got 10 cold storages besides encouragement to HOPCOMS. But has there been any diagnosis of the stagnated performance of HOPCOMS and will this be usable allocation? Similarly, there are quite a few small interventions indicated in the budget, which have severe implementation bottlenecks.

There are two aspects of this budget that one need understand carefully. The first one refers to the plethora of schemes and allocations made not keeping in view the economic viability but only for political suitability.

As regards economic suitability of the schemes and programmes declared in the budget, it is clear that the Chief Minister demonstrates a much dilated vision and therefore, tried to grapple many things at once, even with small allocations.

Agriculture sector requires a sustainable development approach keeping in view the constraints and feasibilities. Promising a New Agricultural Policy, is welcome but one may question what happened to the Agricultural Policy (ies), one of which Yediyurappa released himself during earlier phase as DyCM. Has there been any implementation of those documents and if there are failures of implementation, who should be held accountable for such letdowns? The budget provides Rs 32,259 crore for all the schemes together in agriculture, but the money is too thinly spread across many small interventions and that may not bring desired results.

The plethora of schemes and interventions indicate absence of emphatic strategy towards growth, development and employment. It would be really desirable if at the end of the year the government produces a performance audit of the budget to indicate what has been achieved under various schemes and locate the failures.

(The writer is visiting professor, ISEC)