Puffed-up and poll-ready: Nirmala Sitharaman’s first Interim Budget

No dramatic pre-election concessions in Interim Budget 2024 as Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman sticks to fiscal deficit commitments; promises new urban housing scheme, added rural homes, rooftop solar solutions; vows to turn eastern India into economy’s growth engine

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, presenting her sixth Union Budget and her first Interim Budget, resisted the temptation to hand out dramatic pre-poll sops like the ones unveiled ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha election, opting instead to bank on the government’s track record and the promise of “unprecedented development” in the next five years.

While broadly sticking to her assurance that this 2024-25 Budget would be a ‘vote on account’, without “spectacular announcements”, Ms. Sitharaman painted an elaborate picture of India’s imperfect past prior to 2014, with the economy and governance needing serious mending. She then outlined how the NDA government, with a ‘nation-first’ approach, had enabled the transition to a virtually perfect present.

“It is now appropriate to look at where we were then till 2014 and where we are now, only for the purpose of drawing lessons from the mismanagement of those years,” Ms. Sitharaman said, promising a white paper in the House on the mess allegedly inherited by the Narendra Modi-led government and the economy’s subsequent resurgence to a path of sustainable, high growth.

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“People are living better and earning better, with even greater aspirations for the future. Average real income of the people has increased by 50%. Inflation is moderate,” she underlined.

Though there were no tax breaks, some immediate promises were made, including a scheme to enable the “deserving” urban middle class to buy or build their own homes, two crore more rural houses to be built in the next five years, and 300 units of free power a month for one crore households through rooftop solar solutions, as mooted by Prime Minister Narendra Modi after the Ram Mandir’s consecration last month.

Finance Secretary T.V. Somanathan said the contours for the new housing scheme — which does not directly refer to urban households, but hints at them by picking beneficiaries from chawls, slums or unauthorised colonies — will be finalised before funding the plan.