Does the Budget have a human face?

When the Union Finance Minister Pranab babu rose to present his budget for 2011-12, he was basically presenting hisab kitab of how he was going to spend Rs 12,57,729 crore (Rs 12.57 trillion) during the next year starting on April 1 2011.

Assuming India's population of 115 crore (Rs 1.15 billion), that amount comes to spending Rs 10,937 per head by the Union government.

One way to see if the planned expenditure is prudent is to see if the money is being spent for the basic necessities of the people who are deprived of them.

One major factor here is that two thirds of India still lives in villages and almost all of them depend on agriculture one way or the other.

Now 60 per cent of India's agriculture is rainfed and rainfed farmers and areas have the largest concentration of poorest people.

So one major yard stick to judge the budget would be to see what has the budget done explicitly for the rainfed farmers.

Now if you read through the budget speech of the finance minister and also go through the other budget documents, the words like rain or rainfed that occur just once.

This is when he talks about the allocation of Rs 300 crore (Rs 3 billion) for 60 000 pulses villages for rainfed pulses cultivation.

That is a princely sum of Rs 50 000 for the whole village, around Rs 50 per head and that amount wont come to them as subsidy, but will be spent by the machinery of government to encourage and increase pulses production.

One can argue that even the additional Rs 300 crore each for millets, oilseeds, vegetables, animal protein and fodder will also help poor farmers.

Adding all of that, we see that FM has budgeted Rs 1800 crore (Rs 18 billion) or Rs 16 out of Rs 10,937 available at his disposal for every Indian.

The FM has proposed to spend Rs 400 crore (Rs 4 billion) for extending green revolution in Eastern India. But knowing the state of farming, farmers, soil and agriculture in the traditional green revolution areas of Punjab, Haryana and Western Uttar Pradesh, Eastern India is destined to experience a rather toxic treat.

In stead, if the FM had spent that money in promoting System of Rice Intensification, he would have done a world of good for the yield, soils, environment, food production, food security and most importantly the profitability of small and marginal farmers of Eastern India, including his Bungbhumi.

Similarly, his government spent Rs 49,980 crore (499.80 billion) on promoting chemical fertilisers in 2009-10 and he said in his budget speech that these are leading to deterioration of soil health.

He also said in the budget speech, "the government proposes to promote organic farming methods, combining modern technology with traditional farming practices like green manuring, biological pest control and weed management." But the Mr Mukherjee has allocated zero sum for this!

Talking of Environment, his budget speech actually sounds like death knell for the environment. Right in the beginning of his budget speech, he said, "We have to reconcile legitimate environmental concerns with necessary developmental needs."

Now when environment concerns are getting very little credible attention, and when his government is known more for environment destruction than environment protection, the above quoted sentence is a prescription for environment destruction.

In reality,