As the capital emerges from Covid’s long shadow, the Delhi budget presented on Saturday focused on the need to create and provide jobs and boost economic recovery. It was with this aim that Manish Sisodia, the Deputy CM who also holds the Finance portfolio, christened it a ‘rozgaar budget’, attempting to lay out a roadmap to provide jobs to 20 lakh people in the next five years.
The Rs 75,800 crore budget for financial year 2022-23 saw an increase of about 13.3 per cent as compared to the revised estimates of previous financial year’s budget of Rs 67,000 crore. At 21.5%, education got the highest allocation yet again, followed by health at 13 % and transport and roads at 13%. Allocation to all three heads saw a slight decrease – between 1 and 2.5 percentage points – as compared to the previous financial year.
Sisodia said that under the rozgaar budget, the aim was to increase Delhi’s working population from 33% to 45%. “I am presenting an agenda to create new jobs for the people of Delhi and to boost economic recovery from the damage caused in recent years due to Covid, GST, and demonetisation. This will encourage trade, industry and business and will create a large number of employment and business opportunities for the citizens of Delhi. The schemes and proposals presented in this budget will not only provide new entrepreneurship opportunities to the youth of Delhi, but will also benefit the already established enterprises and businesses,” he said.
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Sisodia said Rs 800 crore has been allocated to create job opportunities and employment. The government is planning to launch an ‘employment audit’ in all its departments and agencies to review the work done and jobs provided each financial year, he said.
“Currently, the total population of 1.68 crore and 56 lakh people have some employment. Our aim is to make this 76 lakh. Under the leadership of Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, we are aiming to increase the percentage of the working population of Delhi from the current 33% to 45% in the next five years,” said Sisodia.
To this end, the budget speaks about positioning Delhi as a retail and wholesale hub, with a special focus of the food business.
After the budget, Kejriwal said it was a miracle that the budget had increased 2.5 fold in seven years. “We aim to create 20 lakh new jobs in the next five years. Just saying it takes courage. This was not an electoral promise, this was the budget. And we have presented a framework to create jobs,” he said, thanking Sisodia.
The government will focus on eight sectors for job creation — retail, food and beverages, logistics, supply, travel and tourism, entertainment, real estate, and green energy. Kejriwal briefly outlined the government’s plan of redeveloping five traditional markets, developing a bazaar portal which will open up the global market to Delhi traders, creating a garment hub in Gandhinagar, developing traditional food hubs and food trucks that will operate till 2 am.
The CM said that the budget not only takes into account job creation, but also addresses increasing costs by providing free education, healthcare, electricity, water, and travel for women.
Presenting the budget, Sisodia said, “We have dealt with the pandemic but we are all aware of the severe damage it has caused to the social and economic progress of the entire country. Delhi is no exception to this. In the last two years, for immediate relief, some ex-gratia help has been given to the aggrieved and needy families/people by arranging financial assistance, ration, food etc., but immediate help is just an instant help, people need jobs.”
Sisodia said the aim of the budget and policies was to not just provide jobs, but to enable others to do the same, but said there was a difference in the way the Delhi government views this.
“When we say that our children become job givers not job seekers, I want to make it clear here that we are not talking about making them self-employed like those self-employed in our country over the last few decades. Famous economic journalists Anshuman Tiwari and Anindya Sen Gupta have written in their recent book ‘Ulti Ginti’, “Swarozgari Bharat ka sabse andhera kona hai”. The Delhi government is aware of the bitter reality of the accreditation of self-employment… I also want to inform the House that every second person among the workers of India is self-employed… and out of our self-employed population, 60 percent are engaged in agricultural work and the remaining 40 percent have small shops or practices like running a workshop, providing some service or the other, hawking, repairing, retailing, carpentry, blacksmith, an electrician, a painter or running a salon. Out of all these self-employed people in the country, only 4% are able to provide employment to other people. The remaining 96% of the self-employed are their own workers in their work or their family members are working with them without any salary. I am not saying that this is wrong. It is good to run your household by being self-employed but this is not the comprehensive solution that we need at the national level. To create nine crore new jobs, we have to create entrepreneurial self-employment on a very large scale which means we will have to create entrepreneurs,” he said.
The Assembly also saw newly elected Punjab finance minister Harpal Singh Cheema and speaker Kuktar Singh Sangwan in attendance. They were invited to understand the process of budget preparation and presentation, said AAP members.
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