All prime ministers before him have respected the tradition of treating the last budget before elections as just a way to keep the government going for a few months. Modi should too
BS| On Feb. 1 in India, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government will present its last federal budget before general elections are held in a few months. Unlike most other budgets, this typically isn’t a high-octane affair; governments are discouraged from locking their successors into any new spending or taxes. An “interim” budget, as it’s called, tries to avoid committing spending for the entire financial year, which begins from April.
But, Modi’s finance minister seems ready to break with that requirement. Politicians from India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party insist that there’s no legal requirement to present just a vote-on-account. And the reason’s obvious: They want to pack in as many big-ticket, populist announcements as they can before the election campaign formally begins and governments are forbidden to make new promises outside party manifestos.
Interim Budget 2019 While Modi doesn’t exactly have his back against the wall in his re-election campaign, he won’t be feeling entirely comfortable either. A round of state elections towards the end of last year saw the BJP lose control of three crucial North Indian states — in the very region that propelled him to his landslide victory in the last parliamentary elections in 2014.
The truth is that Modi doesn’t have very many seats to lose. His majority in the lower house of Parliament is both unprecedented by Indian standards and, nevertheless, razor thin. He won 282 seats out of 543 in 2014, and has lost several in by-elections since. A dip in the prime minister’s popularity doesn’t need to be significant for him to lose his majority. And if he has to try and craft a coalition, he may wind up being vulnerable to leadership challenges from within his party…
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