Budget Priorities Detached from the Concerns of the Masses

The National Secretariat of the Communist Party of India issued today (February 1, 2026) the following statement:

The Union Budget once again reflects the government’s refusal to confront the real economic crisis facing the country. At a time when global uncertainties, geopolitical instability, and trade disruptions are intensifying, the Finance Minister’s speech offered no roadmap to insulate the Indian economy or protect livelihoods. Instead of clarity, the Budget was marked by deliberate vagueness. The Finance Minister avoided giving scheme-wise allocations to major flagship programmes, signalling opacity and an attempt to hoodwink Parliament and the people by hiding cuts behind grand announcements.

The Economic Survey itself acknowledges that India’s growth is being driven primarily by domestic consumption. Yet the Budget completely fails to stimulate demand. In rural India, this failure is evident in the continued neglect and systematic destruction of the social sector. The previous financial year witnessed the dismantling of MGNREGS, once the backbone of rural livelihood security, and its replacement with the contractor-driven VB-GRAM-G Act, which undermines wage employment, decentralisation, and workers’ rights. In urban India, demand remains suppressed as the government refused to provide any meaningful income-tax relief to working people and the middle classes.

The agrarian crisis continues to deepen. The legal guaranteed of MSP, the single most important policy intervention required to stabilise farm incomes, remains elusive despite repeated assurances. Workers across sectors are on the streets protesting against the four anti-labour codes that weaken collective bargaining, social security, and job protection. Meanwhile, health and education remain in a state of neglect, with public investment stagnating and the government’s singular focus being privatisation and corporatisation, further excluding the poor and marginalised.

India’s manufacturing sector, which alone can generate large-scale employment for the masses, continues to show unsatisfactory growth, aggravating the already severe unemployment crisis. While the Finance Minister mentioned the term “AI” eleven times in her speech, there was no concrete articulation of policy, investment, or institutional capacity building in a sector where India is lagging far behind other countries. Under the BJP, AI appears to stand not for Artificial Intelligence, but for Administrative Inertia, symbolising a directionless governance that substitutes buzzwords for vision and slogans for solutions.

Sd/-

Roykutty

Office Secretary