New Delhi: Criticising the 2024-25 Budget, AAP MP Raghav Chadha delivered a sharp rebuke to the government of India in Rajya Sabha on Thursday, claiming that India “pays taxes like England to get services like Somalia.”
He urged the government to conduct a comprehensive review of the tax framework and presented eight suggestions for improvement, India Today reported.
“In the last 10 years, the government has bled the common people dry with taxes,” Chadha said. “And what do we receive in return? No international services, no world-class healthcare, education, or transport facilities. That’s why I say we pay taxes like England but get services like Somalia,” he added.
Chadha’s suggestions included indexing minimum wages to inflation, reworking the agricultural pricing formula to ensure a minimum reserve price for crops, providing a legal guarantee to MSP according to the Swaminathan Commission report, and restoring indexation on long-term capital gains. He also recommended incentivising financial savings in debt, equity, mutual funds, bank deposits, and financial investments, as well as reviewing, revising, and simplifying GST, while reducing GST in export-oriented sectors.
Additionally, he called for promoting cooperative federalism and increasing allocations to all states, and extending GST compensation to states for at least five more years.
Chadha claimed that the Budget displeased all sections of society, including BJP supporters. He attributed the BJP’s reduced seat share in the Lok Sabha from 303 in 2019 to 240 in 2024 to the government’s economic policies, saying, “The people have imposed an 18 percent GST on the seats.” Chadha argued that the primary reasons for the BJP’s decline were economic issues: “The first reason is economy; the second reason is economy; and the third reason is also economy.”
He cited rising rural inflation, unemployment, low crop yield, income inequality, farmer debt, high input costs, low income, lack of MSP, and crop losses as factors contributing to a decadal low in rural income growth for the financial year 2023-24. Chadha noted that unfulfilled promises to double farmers’ income and provide MSP per the Swaminathan Commission have led to a continuous decline in rural wages over the past 25 months. He concluded that the decline in income and rise in inflation during the BJP’s regime over the last decade had resulted in a fall in its rural vote share.
