Budget 2018-19 has a message for the Middle Class

The Budget of 2018-19 has got branded as a ‘nothing-for-middle-class’ financial statement. Right, or wrong, the reality is that this has happened. The defence put up by the Union government on this matter is weak enough to raise the question: Was the Budget meant to give a fig about the Middle Class?

It is a fact that we Indians look upon the government as a guardian angel whose job it is to solve all of life's problems. From happiness to housing, from religion to registrations, the government is either the hero or the villain (no shades of grey here). This time, for the Middle Class, the government is turning out to be a villain. Why? It’s just not putting money in pockets.

The last Budget of the Narendra Modi government's current term was the last hope for the Middle Class. In 2014, this class turned the national narrative into a single word - Modi. It was this class (and not the BJP’s social media mavericks or political strategists) which turned "Acche Din" into an anthem of sorts. It was this class, with its Twitter timelines, that turned Rahul Gandhi into a national joke and Modi into an embodiment of hope. It was this class that had the Congress terrified every time Mani Shankar Aiyar opened his mouth. For a class whose sense of entitlement is already high, all the above stacked up on the debit side. 

Nobody knows it better than a politician that every vote in our democracy is about give-and-take. I vote for you with the hope that you will make my life better – it is as simple and as selfish. Nation, ideology, caste, community, class are all woven around this basic quid pro quo. It would be foolish to think that Narendra Modi, Amit Shah and Arun Jaitley do not know this, or it just slipped their mind. Nothing slips through this triumvirate.

Then what happened? The answer is not a pretty one: Budget 2018-19 was never framed keeping the middle class in mind. It was a conscious, deliberated upon, measured decision to keep the Budget on a single message: This is a government for the poor, the rural and the farmer. For the Middle Class, that translated into: Whether or not you vote for us, no more pampering – it’s DIY from now on.

This came as a shock because the Middle Class had gotten used to politicians who ‘paid back’, coming back every five years with a lollipop for the ballot. There would normally be a sop here, a tax break there, and in the pre-election Budget, the goodies would just rain (hence, the sky-high disappointment this time around).

Now that the Modi government has taken a political position vis-à-vis the Middle Class, it should stick to it. If it doesn’t - falling to the lure of this plump votebank - then there would be no difference between the earlier regimes and the current one. The triumvirate wouldn’t want that, would it? Nor would the Middle Class, if it really wants to get out of the government’s pawn shop and try a hand at ‘DIY’.