FM’s Cabinet mates made sure they were heard

Financial Express, March 01, 2007

Chidambaram offered a bouquet of projects to Tamil Nadu, Bihar and Maharashtra besides other Congress-ruled states like Andhra Pradesh, that were designed to appease various UPA constituents
FE BUREAU, Posted online: Thursday, March 01, 2007 at 0000 hours IST


Influential coalition partners besides some persuasive Cabinet colleagues of finance minister P Chidambaram ensured that their demands did not go unheeded in Budget 2007-08 even as the Left parties kicked up a protest saying their wishlist was ignored.

The finance minister offered a bouquet of projects for Tamil Nadu, Bihar and Maharashtra besides other Congress ruled states like Andhra Pradesh, that were clearly designed to appease various constituents of the UPA as well as the government. To begin with, he sanctioned a Rs 50 crore grant to the Tamil Nadu Agricultural University. The finance minister also announced that the World Bank has signed a loan agreement with Tamil Nadu for Rs 2,182 crore to restore 5,763 water bodies having a command area of 400,000 hectares. At the behest of the DMK leadership, the finance minister has exempted import duty on dredgers which will benefit states like Tamil nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Kerala.

The influence of the RJD was evident with Chidambaram announcing that the “road-cum-rail bridge at Munger, Bihar over the Ganga has been taken up as a national project.”

Similarly the road-cum rail bridge at Bogibeel in Assam, a Congress-ruled state will also be taken up as a national project. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is a Rajya Sabha member from Assam.

Among Chidambaram’s cabinet colleagues, tourism minister Ambika Soni was all smiles as he agreed to most of the demands that her ministry had made. A five year income tax holiday for new two, three and four star hotels in the NCR region will attempt to address the room shortage for the commonwealth games.

Minorities affairs minister AR Antulay will also have reason to cheer as the allocation for his ministry has increased fourfold from Rs 143 crore last year to Rs 500 crore. For minorities, the government has also allocated over Rs 100 crore for development programmes in select districts. It has allocated Rs 90 crore for post-matric and Rs 1.08 crore for pre-matric scholarships for students belonging to minority communities.

The finance minister was also “happy” to announce a scheme for modernisation and technology upgradation of the coir industry in Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala and Orissa. However, the Orissa chief minister, Naveen Patanaik alleged that “injustice done to the kalahandi-Blangir-Koraput districts of Orissa had not been corrected.”

Northeast came under special focus of the finance minister. He proposed Rs 96 crore in the tourism budget projects and schemes, “benefiting the region.” Maharashtra chief minister, Vilasrao Deshmukh revealed that the state “will benefit by extra provision of Rs 3,983 crore for rural electrification under the Rajiv Gandhi electrification scheme.”

Various sops were offered to counter the agrarian crisis . The NCP chief and Agriculture Minister, Sharad Pawar should be satisfied with the Finance Minister announcing a number of proposals including “Mission for pulses,” steps to counter agirucultural indebtedness and measures to boost farm credit. There were guessing games this evening though as to who could have influenced the decision to reduce duty on pet foods from 30 % to 20 %.