“Entrepreneurship itself is being made a villain, which is a shame,” she said, without naming anyone.
Rumours are being spread that domestic institutions “can’t guarantee security to foreign investments,” she claimed, calling for a united fight against such forces.
These elements, she indicated, are attacking society, parliament and the army, and now the economy that is rebounding smartly after Covid.
“The conspiracy is to end India’s entrepreneurial culture even before it fully blooms, and thereby hitting at its core backbone,” the minister said.
After the debate, the Lok Sabha approved the ₹48.21 lakh crore budget. The budget of the Union territory of Jammu and Kashmir was also approved by the lower house.
Household savings
The minister said roughly a fifth of Indian households are now potentially channeling their savings into the financial markets, highlighting that the number of registered investors with National Stock Exchange has tripled since March 2020 to 92 million.
Physical assets of households have also improved during this period, she said, in response to a question on the drop in net household savings as percentage of GDP in FY23.
The minister stressed that improved spending quality with an enhanced capex focus and transparency were recurring features of budgets in recent years, unlike the UPA period when efforts were made to show lower fiscal deficit numbers through off-budget borrowings and oil bonds.
The minister said employment scenario has improved. Between FY18 and FY23, labour force participation rose to 57.9% from 49.8% and jobless rate dropped to 3.2% from 6%.
No state ignored
Countering the opposition’s allegations that some states were ignored by her as they were not named in the budget speech, Sitharaman said even the UPA’s finance ministers didn’t mention the names of 13-26 states in each of the 10 years that the coalition was in power.
The budget has enhanced allocations for agriculture and other social sectors from the year before, she said, refuting claims to the contrary. Allocations for scheduled castes, scheduled tribes and minorities have also been raised and not cut from a year before, she said.
The minister countered Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s jibe that the photograph of this year’s halwa ceremony to mark the printing of budget documents didn’t feature officers belonging to OBC and SC/ST communities. Gandhi was using the picture as an example of the Narendra Modi government’s alleged apathy towards the backward communities.
Sitharaman cited quotes of former Prime Ministers Jawahar Lal Nehru and Rajiv Gandhi that were critical of the reservation system.