Getting Budget 2021-22 Right is Easy: Government Should Just Listen to Citizens

If the Union and state governments imagine the budget from the perspective of what citizens want and need, they will win people's confidence, writes RAVI DUGGAL. The government foregoes revenues over Rs.2,000 billion each year, of which more than half are subsidies to the corporate sector. Reducing this could be a start, along with a big hike in the health sector's allocations by the Centre.

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THERE are huge expectations from the forthcoming Union Budget, given that India is struggling to emerge from the crisis wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic. Truth be told, India was already facing an economic downturn. The pandemic only deepened it into an unprecedented human, social and economic calamity.

Along with the economy, livelihoods took a big hit in India over the last year, precipitating unemployment and hunger. Public health took a battering because of sheer neglect by the state. Considering the massive public health crisis that was on hand, the state should have proactively raised budgetary commitments to healthcare.

Instead, India shut down almost all routine public health services for months, especially in Covid-affected cities. The existing budget resources were redirected to fire-fighting the pandemic. An economic and health catastrophe of this scale had not occurred in India in at least a century.

HEALTH EXPENDITURE POOR

The National Health Policy, 2002, committed to raise public health spending to 2.5% of the GDP and another National Health Policy reiterated this commitment in 2017. Yet, the public health expenditure is still less than 50% of this target. The consequences are there to be seen: India has a poorly-maintained and resource-starved public health system in which positions for doctors, nurses and other paramedics are vacant on a massive scale and there is a critical shortage of medical and diagnostic supplies.