Opposition Says Budget 2020 Does Not Address Unemployment, Slowing Growth

While BJP leaders offered vague praise for the Budget, opposition parties offered concrete criticism.

New Delhi: While most leaders of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party termed Budget 2020 as “visionary” and “futuristic”, opposition leaders panned it as lacking any concrete ideas to address problems such as rising unemployment and plummeting growth rate.

Soon after Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman finished the Budget speech, one of the longest in recent history, the BJP claimed that it addressed development for all sections of the society, on the lines of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Sabka Saath Sabka Vikaas slogan.


Within minutes, leaders from the saffron party took turns on Twitter to trend their praise with #JanJanKaBudget. However, not many pointed out why they felt it was visionary or futuristic.

PM Modi congratulated Sitharaman for preparing a Budget which he called was a mix of “vision and action”. He went on to list out new reforms announced in the Budget.


The opposition leaders had concrete criticisms to offer.

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi said, “Our youth want jobs. Instead they got the longest budget speech in parliamentary history that said absolutely nothing of consequence. PM & FM both looked like they have absolutely no clue what to do next.” He said there was no central idea to rid India of unemployment or improve the poor state of the economy.

Former prime minister Manmohan Singh said that the Budget was “too long to absorb”.

Senior Congress leader and former finance minister P. Chidambaram briefed the media after the Budget. He said, “There were multiple themes, segments and programmes, leaving the listener dazed and confused. It was a laundry list of old (that is current) programmes… The government has given up on reviving the economy or accelerating the growth rate or promoting private investment or increasing efficiency or creating jobs or winning a greater share of world trade.”

Also Read: Budget 2020 Sidesteps the Question of What the Govt Should Do to Revive the Economy

“The Indian economy is demand-constrained and investment-starved. The FM has not acknowledged these two challenges, and that is a pity,” he said, adding that the government was “in complete denial that the economy faces a grave macro economic challenge and the growth rate has declined in six successive quarters.”

“There is nothing in the Budget that leads us to believe that growth will revive in 2020-21. The claim of 6-6.5% growth next year is astonishing and even irresponsible,” he said.

As an advocate of market economy, he lashed out at the government for adhering to protectionist policies. However, he also criticised it for reducing food, fertiliser and petroleum subsidies.

“It appears that the people will not get any relief on the price front. Please remember that CPI inflation is over 7% and food inflation is over 10%,” he said, adding there is no assurance that the finance minister will meet the targets set for 2020-21.

He also said that the government rejected every reform idea contained in the Economic Survey. “Did the FM read the Economic Survey? Was the chief economic adviser privy to the contents of the Budget speech? I think the answer to both questions is in the negative.”

Former finance minister P. Chidambram
Photo: PTI

Government clueless: CPI(M)

Calling the government “clueless” about how to address the current economic crisis, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) said, “…the Modi Government is only interested in providing the corporate sector and the wealthy relief rather than tackling the increasingly grim employment and livelihood situations of the working people – workers, farmers and those forced into self-employment – which is the root cause of the slowdown.”

It said that instead of increasing its social spending to address the demand crunch, the Budget has only aimed at “reducing the fiscal deficit by further slashing government expenditures…the burden of which will be felt by working people.”

“…the expenditures on Central Sector Schemes in 2019-20 has been slashed by 11 per cent and Centrally Sponsored Schemes by 4.5 per cent – covering areas like – food subsidies, agriculture and allied activities, Development of the North-East, Social Welfare, Energy, etc. In the cuts proposed in 2020-21, MNREGA (Rs. 61,500 crore from Rs. 71,000 crore) and fertilizer subsidies are slated to join this list. Even the flagship schemes like PMJAY-Ayushman Bharat, Swachh Bharat and PM-Kisan have suffered major cuts. Allocations for the welfare of scheduled castes and scheduled tribes, already way below the statutory requirements, have been cut in 2019-20. The Gender Budget allocation for 2020-21 similarly shows stagnation,” the Left party said in its statement, also adding that the government manipulated revised estimates of revenue figures.

“Revised Estimates (RE) figures show that the revenue collections in 2018-19 are way below the Budget Estimates (BE), still they underestimate the extent of the shortfall. The RE figures of Central Tax Revenues are incompatible with the actual collections reported by the CGA for April-December of 2019-20. A realistic RE would have shown a further shortfall of close to 1.5 lakh crores in gross revenues from central taxes.”

Also Read: Budget 2020 Fails MGNREGA, Yet Again

Trinamool Congress’s Derek O Brien said that the Budget “takes this country from economic crisis to economic disaster, from the ICU to the ventilator.” He called out the government for putting a cess on health even as there were no relief measures for the poor and unemployed. He said even at the time of such high unemployment rate, funds for MGNREGS was slashed by 13%.

He also lashed out at the government’s proposals to indirectly privatise BSNL and LIC. “More importantly, the LIC sale would be used to compensate the states on GST. What’s going on,” he asked. He also criticised the government’s move to remove at least 70 exemptions that people used to save income tax.


Regional parties like Aam Aadmi Party and Rashtriya Janata Dal hit out at the union government for ignoring the interests of their states.


Akhilesh Yadav of Samajwadi Party said that the Budget does not give any incentives to any section of the society, and would fail to stem price rise.