Congress party is well known for ‘Know-it-all’ ministers and ‘Promise-it-all’ manifestos. The party made many unrealistic promises in its manifesto for 2018 Madhya Pradesh assembly election. The manifesto included promises like waiver of loans up to 2 lakh of 81 lakh farmers in the state, 51,000 rupees for marriage of small and marginal farmer’s daughter, increasing the limit of Kisan Credit Card (KCC), loan waiver to women self-help groups and so on. As if all this was not enough to win the election, Congress party promised to give 10,000 rupees per month to every unemployed youth of the state. Newly minted CM of MP, Kamal Nath has already announced the farm loan waiver and that would cost 50,000 crore rupees. Imagine the amount of money needed to fulfill all promises.
According to the latest Economic Survey of Madhya Pradesh, there are 23.7 lakh people registered with employment exchange in the state. This will result in Rs 28,440 crores rupees additional burden to the exchequer of Madhya Pradesh, annually. Shivraj Singh Chouhan has taken care of fiscal health of the state however fiscal deficit widened in the last years of his government. The state ran a deficit of Rs 14,064 crore for fiscal year 2015-16 which increased to Rs 25,688 crore in 2016-17 and further increased to Rs 29,688 crore in 2017-18. So, if the newly elected chief minister of the state decides to implement farm loan waiver, unemployment benefits and many other promised schemes, he must rob a bank because the state treasury does not have enough money to spend.
The farm loan waiver will alone account for a significant percentage of the state GDP. The unemployment benefit scheme will cost around 2.7 percent of the state GDP. Total receipts for previous fiscal year were Rs 1, 45,111 crore rupees and total expenditure was Rs 1,69,954 crore rupees. The state is already running fiscal deficit of 4.63 percent of state GDP. So the question is, how Kamal Nath government will accommodate all these expenses? This is very clear from the data that given the limited resources of the state, Kamal Nath government will not be able to deliver on the promises.
Karnataka government has GDP of 14.08 lakh crore in comparison to 8.26 lakh crore of Madhya Pradesh government. Karnataka set aside 34,000 crore rupees for farm loan waiver but had to include 11 riders like people having job or vehicle will not get benefit of the waiver. So, Karnataka government does not want the farmers to have access to farm loan waiver. Now imagine how Madhya Pradesh with almost 40 percent lower state budget will be able to implement farm loan waiver worth Rs 50,000 crore and unemployment benefits worth Rs 28,440 crore.
Therefore, it is very clear that the MP government will adhere to same practices as Karnataka government and put many riders on farm loan waiver and unemployment benefits. Thus, the majority of the people will not able to claim the benefits. In Karnataka, so far only 800 farmers benefitted from farm loan waiver in four months. The data for Madhya Pradesh could be even lower because its promises are even more unrealistic than that of Karnataka government. The fiscal deficit of the state will also move northwards and will further deteriorate fiscal health of the state.
