Harsimrat Kaur Badal, Member Parliament from Bathinda today slammed the Congress led UPA Government for irrelevant budget presented recently and said that once again UPA Government has with its budget proved how disconnected it was with the issues that plague the people of our country including Price rise, corruption, joblessness, inaccessibility to quality or adequate health and educational facilities besides slow growth, lack of infrastructure and development etc. Mrs. Badal said that it was a matter of great concern that Congress led UPA government presented a budget like an accountant’s statement of a desperately doing a balancing act to ensure its last year in office without toppling the applecart and had no road map for any development of welfare of common masses reeling under neck breaking inflation. She pointed out that all the failures of the Union Government due to policy paralysis, corruption, multi crore scams, loot and non-performance leading to price rise and gloom and slow growth across the country.
The Member Parliament said that our neighbour China has had a growth rate of 9.2% and 7.8% during the last 2 years. Even a small country like Indonesia has been growing at 6.5% and 6.2% as against India’s 5.2% and 4.8%. How has China controlled its inflation at 3.2% and Indonesia controlled it at 5.3% as against India’s 11% , She added . Accusing the Congress led UPA Government for the agrarian crisis in the country and the growing farmer woes of rising cost of inputs like diesel and fertilizer, she lamented that the government has in its 9 years tenure increased the prices by250-400% yet it prides itself for increasing the MSP by barely 100%.Giving the details ever increasing inflation, She said that the price of Diesel has been increased by 250% since the year 2004 and Similarly, the prices of Potash, DAP and Mobile Oil have been increased upto 400%, 331% and 200% respectively in the meantime while the MSP of Wheat and Rice has barely doubled during this period. Besides this the prices of diesel and fertilizers were set to rise further every month due to Congress’s anti-people and pro-MNCs policy of decontrol and cutting subsidies.In a sharp reaction on the speech of Finance Minister, Mrs. Badal said that he had failed to realise that due to the wrong policies Union Government, the National Crime Record Bureau has recorded almost 15964 farmers suicide deaths in 2010 which in reality as per the farmer organizations were closer to 2 lakh farmers committing suicide each year due to the apathetic attitude of UPA Government. She said that even the state of Punjab’s farm debt has reached to the tune of Rs. 40,000 crores with every farming household being under debt of more than 3 lakh rupees.
She said that the UPA Government’s most publicized scheme of Rs. 56000 crore Agriculture Debt Waiver Scheme, did not even spare the poor farmer where CAG has reported 30% of the waiver has been siphoned off and more than 34.5 lakh eligible farmers did not get any waiver. She said that in a state like Punjab that was totally agrarian, contributing 50% of the total wheat and rice to the country’s food bowl, our farmers who are under a debt of 40,000 crores received barely 1.5% of this waiver with all the eligible farmers being denied due to the ill-managed policies of Union Government and raised a question that Why should not this government be charged with abetment to farmers suicides ?
Demanding a fair deal for poor, youth and women, Mrs. Badal said that UPA Government should ensure the benefit of each welfare scheme right from health to education to each unprivileged family, sufficient job opportunities and quality education for the youth and security of women as it was totally failed on these crucial issues during its almost 10 years regime.