Chasing the Millennium Development Goals:

Budget 2008 has appeared as an instrument to achieve political gains, to many, in the forthcoming elections, by the ruling party. But to me it appears as a well crafted and directed budget, which apart from fulfilling the political gains of ruling party aims to appease the noble cause driven by World Bank, which is one of the premier lending agencies to GOI.

In a report, by World Bank on status of achieving millennium development goals for year 2006, it clearly indicates the intentions were to accelerate the Agriculture, Health and Education, development program in the country during and post 2007. The budget for FY08-09, indicates, that it is clearly in the line with the report, as all the three stated sectors had received the best sops, during the coming financial year.

In past couple of years we have seen a steep rise in rate of development of India. The excerpts from the WB clearly indicate this:

But the concerns are not these. We all know that growth for last two financial years had been striking; it can be compared to the boom that American economy saw during 1970. The good part is that we are in growth mode, but the bad news is that we are also slipping into same recession that America witnessed in 70’s. Thus, it was required by India to avoid this situation.

The growth should be sustainable and in accordance with the supporting factors. Thus this time, our TAX aka. Finance minister did some thing really well, in the last year of his tenure.

It had been bought up by several newspapers that the sops to farmers in the form of waiver of loans shall drill a hole of mammoth figure in economy. The bank shall be levied with extra burden.

In my opinion, “ Its no point having a growth which shall never help to remove the Tag of Developing Economy from India”. As from the figures that are suggested in the illustrations above, that the rate at which poor are becoming rich is good, but contrary to that the number of poor, in India is still increasing. Thus we need to have a system that should ensure growth in a manner, to ensure development of all. The current budget is confirming to this, and shall help remove the hurdles of economy.

But the other things that should have attracted the attention, was improving the health services of poor, in India. The staggering decrease in maternal and child mortality rate in rural areas, as compared to last decade, need to be put in line with the development plans. The shocking figures of, 24% of people dead due to diseases were killed by TB alone. Though we see, a lot being done but there is still a hall (big room) left for improvement. The focus on developing health services in rural India as well as free consultation for BPL population would have been more attractive than reducing the taxes on LSD’s alone.