Two populist Budgets, five years apart: The likeness of Gehlot and Raje’s announcements

In the last several months, Gehlot has been consistently expressing confidence about the Congress getting re-elected — a herculean task given the fact that in the past 25 years every incumbent government has been voted out.

Gehlot’s populist announcements echoed the measures his predecessor Vasundhara Raje of the BJP had announced in her government’s last Budget in February 2018. Raje had banked on a flurry of populist announcements, with the most potent weapon in her arsenal being the announcement of a one-time farm-loan waiver for small and marginal farmers up to Rs 50,000. The measure was expected to cost the state exchequer Rs 8,000 crore.

On Friday, Raje, who at present is facing a challenge from multiple state BJP leaders with chief ministerial ambitions, not only sat through the entire duration of Gehlot’s three-hour-plus speech but also attacked the CM when he erroneously read out portions from his previous year’s Budget speech. “This is sheer carelessness,” Raje said.

Fighting anti-incumbency and embattled by a string of bypoll defeats, Raje had announced subsidies worth Rs 50 lakh for Nandi Gaushala (cow shelters) in each district and increased fodder subsidy from 90 days to 180 days. Five years later, Gehlot has announced Rs 40,000 compensation for cattle rearers who lose milch cows.

Among the other major announcements was the decision to provide government jobs to Covid-19 orphans, along with the decision to send Annapurna food packets to the families covered under the National Food Security Act (NFSA) in the state.

In his recent speeches and interactions with the media, Gehlot appealed to the electorate to give him another chance to serve them, adding that there is no anti-incumbency against his administration.

Catering to the public sentiment against repeated question paper leaks during his government’s tenure, Gehlot also announced a special task force to prevent question paper leaks.

It was expected that the Budget would have a large array of populist announcements. Last year, Gehlot surprised everyone by moving back to the Old Pension Scheme (OPS), which has since then triggered a nationwide debate over the issue, with other Congress-ruled states also following his footsteps. In the recent elections in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh, the Congress used OPS as one of its main poll promises.

On Friday, Gehlot extended the ambit of OPS to employees of various commissions, electricity commission employees — they had recently protested demanding to be included under OPS — along with other institutions such as institutions and academies.