The provision for MGNREGA, a lifeline for the poor, is pegged at Rs 73,000 crore, lower than Rs 98,000 crore in 2021-22 (RE) and Rs 1,11,000 crore in 2020-21.


The setting for the 2022-23 Union Budget was quite unprecedented: Acute unemployment, growing poverty, burgeoning wealth and income inequalities, and accelerating inflation. One expected to find in the budget some measures for stimulating the economy, and also some gesture towards alleviating distress. Such alleviation, even if not used as the primary means of stimulating the economy, could have constituted a set of separate and additional provisions. This was not to be. The budget has been a gigantic non-event, blithely ignoring the economy’s travails and providing neither stimulus nor succour to the poor.

Picture- Internet