बजट-2024 एनालिसिस: मोदी 3.0 के पहले बजट पर गठबंधन सरकार का असर साफ…मिडिल क्लास को इनकम टैक्स में राहत बहुत मामूली

The first budget of Modi 3.0 is interesting as well as quite complicated. There is a big difference between what is said in the budget and what you get to read in the Finance Bill. Some hopes, some expectations that were from the budget… in those expectations there were some political signals that came out of the elections, an attempt has been made to include all of them. Usually to understand the budget we go from Part-A to Part-B. But today let us start this budget from Part-B and go to Part-A… let us understand the budget by starting from the reverse side.

The last part of the budget…in which people are most interested. Before the provisions, let us know the big signals which will decide the future direction. It is believed that the middle class waits the most for the income tax related announcements in the budget. However, income tax is not the middle class…India’s middle class is very big. It is not limited to people who pay tax of Rs 2 to 2.5 crores, but still the interpretation of the entire budget is focused on these people only.

In the new tax regime that was introduced in 2020, there was no system to encourage savings, there was no incentive for it. This time again in the budget, the Finance Minister has reiterated this commitment and made the new tax regime more attractive, but has not touched the old tax regime. Standard deduction has been increased in the new tax regime, which will benefit the salaried class by Rs 25 thousand. A slight change has been made in the slab, the income slab of 3 to 6 lakhs has been changed to 6 to 7 lakh rupees and there will be some savings here. From here the Finance Minister has made this philosophy clear that saving is your own responsibility. The government will keep the tax rates low and will not give you concessions and this is the thing to understand.

Now we move to the other side where many people had their eyes and there was a lot of upheaval regarding it… the stock market. Which fell sharply after the budget, became very restless and there are many things in this budget that make the stock market restless. Like long term capital gains were increased from 10% to 12.5%, the rate of STT was doubled on those who trade on F&O, changes were made regarding indexation benefit in property and the rates of short term capital gains were also increased about which information will be given later. Overall, all this was not good for the investment mood. The market did not want such a budget. The market felt that the mood was not right and hence this budget was weak from the point of view of the stock market, weak from the point of view of investors. But yes, if we look at it from the point of view of small investors, they will not have to pay tax on capital gains of Rs 1.15 lakh from mutual funds in a year.

As I said in the beginning, this government has been very reserved about income tax for the last 10 years. Whatever changes have been made in the tax slabs, they are very minor. In a way, this is a thanksgiving from the Finance Minister that you brought us to power for the third time… here is a help of 12 to 15 thousand. Overall, there has been no major change which makes this a dream budget for income tax. Especially considering the way inflation has increased and the cost of living of the middle class has increased… these tax concessions are minor.

It is also important to talk about an announcement related to custom duty. There was pressure on the government to reduce the duty on mobile phones and their parts coming from abroad. Not so that the prices in India can be reduced but so that the cost of mobile companies exporting from India can be reduced. We will get some benefit from this and you will also get it…if mobile companies pass on the custom duty concessions to the customers then mobiles can become cheaper.

Now let’s come to the big announcements. Among the big announcements, one is the headline-making announcement and the other is the political announcement. If you compare the two budget announcements together, a package of five schemes worth Rs 2 lakh crore has been announced for employment in the budget. This is an indication that the government has accepted the fact that something should be done about the backlash that came during the elections regarding unemployment.

On the other hand, about one lakh crore rupees of direct aid was given to two states of alliance parties. One is Andhra Pradesh and the other is Bihar. If seen from a political perspective, the budget has many meanings, but if seen from an economic perspective, there is not much to be found in the budget. Because this budget is a complete budget of the interim budget. 6 months have passed… the next big budget will start being prepared from the end of the year. Therefore, the biggest priority of the government at this time was that after this budget, its alliance partners should remain calm and stay together.

The rest are only small symbolic announcements for railways and infrastructure. This also shows that the government wants to show continuity through this budget. We see some small initiatives. Of different types. The effect of those initiatives will not be visible much in increasing growth in the economy, increasing jobs, increasing demand.

Thirdly, after this, if you want to find any focus of the budget, then it is small industries. However, in the case of small industries also, the same schemes are running. Allocations in them were increased and provisions like giving them loans more easily with the help of banks were added.

The previous budgets of the Modi government talked about big schemes, discussed mega schemes. The challenges of the coalition government were clearly visible in this budget. Because the reflection of mega schemes was not seen in this budget. In the entire speech, we did not hear about Smart City… Ganga Mission. Many such big schemes were not heard this time, but yes, many allocations must have been made on these in the budget documents, hidden. This time those flag bearing schemes were not there.

Overall, this was the mid-term budget of the government. Looking at this budget, it seems that based on the results of this budget, the Finance Minister will have to make major changes in many important areas. We should expect a real reform budget in February 2025.