The PM Internship Scheme aims to provide internship opportunities to one crore youth in 500 top CSR spend companies in the next five years. Representational file image.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

The Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) on Tuesday (October 1, 2024) said it is working closely with the Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA) to facilitate the implementation of the Prime Minister’s Internship Scheme that was announced in the Budget.

The PM Internship Scheme aims to provide internship opportunities to one crore youth in 500 top CSR spend companies in the next five years.

Also read | Budget proposes five schemes with outlay of ₹2 lakh crore to generate jobs for youth

CII is acting as a critical facilitator between the government and the industry, ensuring the scheme’s effective rollout, the industry body stated.

The PM Internship Scheme will enhance youth employability in India by offering them hands-on exposure to real-world business environments.

The scheme will also benefit the industry by creating a pipeline of skilled, work-ready youth who can be employed post-internship both in large as well as micro, small and medium enterprise, CII stated.

The MCA has also launched a dedicated, user-centric portal for the scheme, which will serve as a centralised hub and a link between the companies and the aspiring interns, allowing smooth navigation of the scheme’s application and participation processes.

“With industries grappling with a growing talent shortage, the PM Internship Scheme provides a crucial bridge. By offering on-the-job training to youth, it will prepare them to meet the evolving Industry demands, while ensuring that businesses get access to a skilled and agile future workforce, fostering progress and innovation,” CII Director General Chandrajit Banerjee said.

“With internships for one crore youth across sectors, including Manufacturing and services, this scheme will cultivate a skilled workforce ready to take on future challenges,” stated Sanjiv Puri, President, CII and Chairman & Managing Director, ITC Ltd.

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman replies to the debate on the Finance Bill in the Lok Sabha on August 7, 2024. Photo: SansadTV via ANI

The Finance Bill 2024 was passed in the Lok Sabha on Wednesday (August 7, 2024) with an amendment relaxing the recently introduced new capital gains tax on real estate. It allows tax payers an option to switch to a new lower tax rate or stick to the old regime that had higher rate with indexation benefit.

The amendment comes after a proposal to remove indexation benefit in calculation of long-term capital gains on sale of immovable properties in the Budget 2024-25 had evoked criticism from various corners, including Opposition parties and tax professionals. The Budget had proposed a lower 12.5% rate of LTCG tax, down from 20%, while doing away with the indexation benefit.

With this amendment, individuals or Hindu Undivided Families (HUFs) who bought houses before July 23, 2024, can opt to pay LTCG tax under the new scheme at the rate of 12.5% without indexation or claim the indexation benefit and pay 20% tax.

The Finance Bill 2024 was passed by a voice vote in the Lok Sabha with a total of 45 official amendments.

Replying to the debate before the passage of the Bill, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, rejected criticism from Opposition parties that the middle class was heavily taxed. She said that the Budget proposals were aimed at promoting investment and benefiting the middle class.

She said that the Narendra Modi government had brought in a simplified taxation regime and eased compliance without drastically increasing taxes.

Among the various measures taken to help the middle class, Ms. Sitharaman mentioned the reduction in customs duty on various goods that would promote trade and investment and generate employment. She also referred to the hike in tax exemption limit on long-term capital gains in listed equities and bonds to ₹1.25 lakh from ₹1 lakh, a move that she said would benefit those investing in the stock market.

The Finance Minister said that simplification of the tax regime was the primary objective of the Modi government , highlighting that 72% of those who had paid income tax had opted for the new regime while filing returns this year.

“We have made transformational changes in tax governance. In 2023, the tax slabs were significantly reduced. Again, this has been done this year,” Ms. Sitharaman said, adding that the standard deduction for the salaried class had been increased.

On the Opposition’s demand for removal of Goods and Services Tax on health and life insurance premiums, the Union Minister said that 75% of the GST collected goes to States.

“Prior to levying 18% GST on health insurance [premium], all States used to levy tax on insurance premiums. So when GST was rolled out, the tax automatically got subsumed into GST,” she said.

Opposition MPs staged a walkout after a furore over the government not taking up an amendment in the Finance Bill to withdraw the 18% GST levy on medical and life insurance premiums. The amendment had been moved by N.K. Premachandran of the Revolutionary Socialist Party.

The Finance Minister said any amendment in GST had to be approved by the GST Council.

Budget 2024-25 promised that “a policy for promoting pumped storage projects will be brought out for electricity storage and facilitating smooth integration of the growing share of renewable energy with its variable and intermittent nature.”

Why pumped storage

India has planned to create an ambitious 500 GW of non-fossil power by 2030. In around two years, from 2021 to 2023, it created some 23 GW of non-fossil generation capacity. Out of 10 GW added in eight months in 2023-24, 7.5 GW were wind and solar, pointing to how renewables will account for most of the new power generation that will be added in India.

Actual renewable power generation has crossed 10% of the total generation and its share will only increase many times. This power will necessarily vary and is “infirm.”

Indian policies have laid down that all the power that renewable sources generate should be used and their curtailment should be the last priority. State-of-the-art forecasting techniques have helped to predict more accurately how much will renewable power generation vary in the course of a day. This has helped grid operators plan in advance how to increase or decrease power generation from other sources to provide steady power to the consumer.

Hydro power generation can quickly ramp up or ramp down in a matter of seconds. Hydro helped to ensure there were no blackouts during the lights-off campaign during the pandemic, for instance. Gas turbines come next. Coal and nuclear need hours of notice.

When the world’s attention turned to renewables and the problem of variable power generation, many solutions were proposed for storing energy and releasing it when wind and solar are down. Until then, no electricity generated was stored in large scale.

Among energy storage methods thought of were scaling up batteries and pumping in compressed air into large caverns and then drawing on them to generate power when required. But, much of the energy storage adopted across the world today is pumped storage that uses water. These are like super large batteries but natural and use water.

India’s experience

India has 3.3 GW of pumped storage. Main ones are Nagarjunasagar, Kadana, Kadamparai, Panchet and Bhira. Some four are under construction and two in advanced levels of planning.

China leads the world with 44 GW of pumped storage supporting 1,300 GW of wind and solar. India would therefore need to ramp up its pumped storage capacity by several times if it wants to meet its renewable power generation targets.

Pumped storage is of two types: on river and off river. On-river is like any hydroelectric project supplied by a river. Existing hydro projects could become pumped storage. Off-river projects are those that have two reservoirs at two different levels to which the water is pumped up or falls down to under gravity in a closed loop. Abandoned mines can, for instance, be converted to such reservoirs. When there is surplus power, water is pumped up from lower to upper reservoir and when power is needed the water can fall down under gravity to turn the turbines and generate power.

How Kadamparai operates

In Tamil Nadu, at noon on a typical day in July, wind and solar can generate half of all power. This is among the highest in the country.

While the State was an early starter and leader in wind power capacity, more recent renewables have been solar.

On a summer day, solar plants in Tamil Nadu produce some 5,000 MW at noon. But that power dwindles as the day progresses and drops to zero when the sun sets. Wind has its own vagaries too. The wind season is May-September.

Tamil Nadu has peaks of around 17,000 MW to 20,000 MW on a daily basis. This year in July, maximum wind power generated reached 5,499 MW and maximum solar reached 5,512 MW. Wind and solar have Must Run Status in the State which means whatever they produce must be taken.

The Kadamparai plant near Valparai in Coimbatore district came up some 37 years ago before wind and solar of any scale was there. The purpose was to help balance the grid and the plan has come in handy when Tamil Nadu took the lead in renewable power generation.

The plant has a higher reservoir that is at a height of around 380 m above a lower reservoir. Each unit is a turbine generator set producing electric power when the water flows from the upper reservoir to the lower. The same unit can function as a pump consuming electric power when it pumps water from lower to higher reservoir.

The previous day morning, power managers in Tamil Nadu plan for the next day how much and when to operate each power plant in the State based on several factors such as demand expected as well as a forecast of wind blowing and sun shining. Typically, when the sun shines brightest, there is a power surplus coming from solar. That power is used to pump up the water at Kadamparai. Each unit needs 20% more power to operate as pump than what it can produce as generator. But this is solar power and no fuel is burned to produce that electric power.

When the Kadamparai plant is operating as a pump to store energy, it would need about an hour and half to switch to generating mode. When stopped, it would need about half hour to start and generating at full load.

When solar generation stops and the evening peak load begins after 6pm, Kadamparai plant becomes a generator. It can produce 400 MW of full power for three to four hours and help support the evening peak loads. Sometimes the plant is operated at less than full load late into the night depending on the conditions.

The upper reservoir has around 1 TMC feet of water. Leakages are marginal and are often replenished by natural rainfall.

When the solar is coming in full, power managers in the State stop drawing power from hydro of which the State has around 1,000 MW. Hydro can be quickly turned on if there is a sudden drop in power generation, such as in the case of an outage. Barring water for irrigation and drinking, hydro is used for power generation when demand peaks.

Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman speaks in the Rajya Sabha during the Monsoon session of Parliament on July 31, 2024.
| Photo Credit: PTI

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on July 31said the Union Budget strikes a fine balance between growth, employment, capital investment, and fiscal consolidation, among others.

Replying to the discussion on the Union Budget 2024-25 and Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir in Rajya Sabha, Ms. Sitharaman also said the Budget proposes unflinching support to cooperative federalism.

“I would like to underline that our unflinching commitment to cooperative federalism. The total resources proposed to be transferred to the States in 2024-25 is estimated at ₹22.91 lakh crore. This actually entails an increase of ₹2.49 lakh crore over 2023-24,” the minister said.

Referring to Union Budget, she said the capital expenditure in the last 10 years of the Narendra Modi government stood at ₹43.82 lakh crore, which is compared to ₹13.19 lakh crore during the decade-ago rule of UPA.

She also said the PLI schemes continue to remain attractive for the manufacturing sector. The Budget is an exercise to make India an attractive destination for manufacturing companies, she added.

She also said the government is complying with the fiscal deficit trajectory. It will bring down the deficit to below 4.5% by 2025-26 from the targeted 4.9% for the current fiscal.

The finance minister highlighted that for agriculture and allied sectors the budget has allocated ₹1.52 lakh crore, which is ₹8,000 crore more than the previous year. For comparison, in 2013-14, the last year of Congress-led UPA, only ₹30,000 crore was allocated for agriculture.

She also emphasised that the financial position of the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir has improved. She noted that the J&K Bank has made a turnaround and posted profit.

Amid criticism of Budget 2024 from several quarters, Union Minister and senior BJP leader Nitin Gadkari has written to Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, requesting her to withdraw the GST imposed on premiums for life and medical insurance plans.

Mr Gadkari has said in his letter that he is writing to the Finance Minister following a memorandum from the Nagpur Divisional Life Insurance Corporation Employees Union.

“Main issue raised by the Union is related to withdrawal of GST on Life and Medical Insurance Premium. Both life insurance and medical insurance premiums attract a GST rate of 18 per cent. Levying GST on life insurance premium amounts to levying tax on the uncertainties of life,” the Road Transport and Highways Minister has written.

“The Union feels that the person who covers the risk of life’s uncertainties to give some protection to the family should not be levied tax on the premium to purchase cover against this risk. Similarly, the 18% GST on medical insurance premium is proving to be a deterrent for the growth of this segment of business, which is socially necessary. Therefore, they have urged withdrawal of GST as mentioned above,” he has added.

Mr Gadkari said the union that met him also raised points related to differential treatment to savings by way of life insurance, re-introduction of IT deduction for health insurance premium and consolidation of public and sector general insurance companies.

“In view of the above, you are requested to consider the suggestion of Withdrawal of GST on Life and Medical Insurance Premium on priority as it becomes cumbersome for the senior citizens as per rules with due verification along with other relevant points raised,” the former BJP has said in his letter to Ms Sitharaman.

Mr Gadkari’s letter to the Finance Minister comes amid criticism from several quarters over the first Budget of the third Narendra Modi government, presented last week. While the Opposition has accused the Centre of being generous only to states ruled by its key allies TDP and JDU, a section of social media users have pointed to high tax rates for the salaried class.

The Finance Minister has trashed the Opposition’s charge, saying the Centre has provided funds to all states. She has said that if the name of a state is not mentioned in the Budget speech, it does not mean it is not covered. The BJP has said policy priorities of the Budget suggest that it has a long-term goal of ‘Viksit Bharat’ — making India a developed nation — by 2047.

New Delhi:

Union finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, under Opposition attack over her union budget in parliament for days, today came prepared to address their long list of grouses. The biggest of these had come from chief ministers of Opposition-ruled states — that all the largesse has been directed at two NDA allies, Bihar and Andhra Pradesh.

For days, the finance minister has been pointing out that the budget speech is only the highlights and all states have received their share. Today she took it a step further, presenting the results after trawling through the budget speeches of the UPA era.

“I have been picking up on Budgets since 2004-5. In 2004-5, 17 states were not named in the budget speech. 16 states not named in 2006-07… In 2009, 26 states were not named — Bihar and UP,” she said. “I want to ask the UPA government — did money not go to those states,” she added, while responding to the debate over the budget.

“I humbly state that all members know that if a state is not named doesn’t mean money does not go to them. It is a misleading campaign. It pains me to know that they could say that if you have not mentioned a state state, it gets nothing,” she said.

“If you want to distort, create a sense of fear you can go about distorting data. In the last few years, we have ministers go to each state and explain how much is given to each state,” th eministr added.. 

The minister also read out a series of figures — this year’s and the last — to counter allegations that social sector and welfare schemes have been neglected. The Opposition, led by Rahul GAndhi, has also alleged that there was nothing for farmers, small traders and MSMEs.

“The Budget allocation for the department of agriculture and farmers’ welfare was only Rs 21,934 crore in 2013-2014. However, in 2024-2025, it has increased to Rs 1.23 lakh crore,” the minister said.

Pointing out that it is a five-time increase, she said, “More than Rs 3.2 lakh crore have been disbursed to over 11 crore farmers under PM Kisan since its launch”.

Yesterday, Leader of the Opposition Rahul Gandhi had launched a fierce attack on the government over the budget, pointing out areas where it was silent, starting with paper leak and caste census.

The government has sustained its expenditure as a share of the total budget on infrastructure.
| Photo Credit: Getty Images/iStockphoto

The story so far: In her Budget proposals for 2024-25, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has set aside ₹11 lakh crore for capital expenditure, comprising 3.4% of the GDP. With the aim to push States to spend on infrastructure, she said ₹1.5 lakh crore was being made available to them in the form of long-term interest free loans.

Which are the sectors on the radar?

According to an analysis by The Hindu’s data team, the government has sustained its expenditure as a share of the total Budget on infrastructure which was at 13.9% (as compared to 14.3% in FY2024 RE). The transport sector formed the bulk of the expenditure in FY25BE (Budget estimates) at 11.29%. However, transport’s share in the total Budget has come down by 0.4% points from last year. Allocations to the power sector has improved marginally from last year. The Ministry of Roads, Transport and Highways received an allocation of ₹2.78 lakh crore for 2024-25. In FY25BE, the outlay for the Railways continues to be over the 5% mark. It received a record allocation of over ₹2.55 lakh crore. Allocations for signalling and telecom work, under which the KAVACH (automatic train protection system) is included, has increased compared with FY24RE (revised estimates). The allocation for the Ministry of Civil Aviation at ₹2,357 crore saw a decline of 20% from last year. With an allocation of ₹2,377 crore, the outlay for shipping has stagnated. The regional connectivity scheme will receive ₹502 crore.

What is the progress on roads?

According to the Economic Survey 2024, national highways have grown by 1.6 times from 2014 to 2024. The Bharatmala Pariyojana has significantly expanded the national highway network, increasing the length of high-speed corridors by 12 times and 4-lane roads by 2.6 times between 2014 and 2024. The government is developing 11 industrial corridor projects in a phased manner. In order to attract private investment, the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways has made a slew of changes to the model concession agreement for Build-Operate-Transfer, including construction support, to ensure timely completion of the projects. But industry says the profitability of the new agreements need to be tested. With many projects nearing completion, the focus also needs to shift from asset creation to asset management as well as maintenance and safety, say experts. The industry seeks standard operating procedures for construction of bridges and tunnels to avoid safety incidents such as the Silkyara tunnel collapse in Uttarakhand in 2023.

What are the challenges in Railways?

The capital expenditure for Indian Railways with a network of over 68,584 route km has increased by 77% over the past five years (₹2.62 lakh crore in FY24) with investments in the construction of new lines, gauge conversion, and doubling. Yet, many challenges remain. According to Afaq Hussain, Director, Bureau of Research on Industry and Economic Fundamentals (BRIEF), the skewed freight movement share in favour of roads has to be amended. Long-haul freight transportation through roads is approximately 25-30% costlier than railways for distances less than 500 km, he pointed out. Other issues such as uncertainty in rake supply, delay in providing adequate infrastructure and sharing of lines by passenger and freight trains also need to be dealt with. Smooth entry and exit of freight vehicles is necessary for efficient loading and unloading operations.

What about shipping and airports?

Under the Sagarmala national programme launched in 2015, a total of 839 projects worth ₹5.8 lakh crore have been undertaken across five key areas including fresh development. Till date, 262 projects worth ₹1.4 lakh crore have been completed. Mr. Hussain explains that though there are more than 230 maritime ports, two ports at JNPT and Mundra handle nearly 40% of export, import cargo. Therefore, there is a need to develop a plan for the remaining ports. As for airports, under the second phase of privatisation in 2019, six AAI airports were privatised. There is a plan to privatise 25 more airports.

What about attracting private investments?

According to CRISIL’s Infrastructure Yearbook 2023, between FY2019 and 2023, the Centre contributed 49% of the total investments on infrastructure and State governments 29%, leaving the balance to be covered by the private sector. Jaganarayan Padmanabhan, Senior Director at CRISIL, explains that the private sector has been shying away because of the market risks experienced due to delays in completion of projects which impacts returns.

There is also a need to identify a lot more assets to monetise built infrastructure. In order to bring policy and regulatory challenges that Ms. Sitharaman mentioned in the speech, the government must also implement the Kelkar Committee report of 2015, says Mr. Padmanabhan.

The story so far: The Union Budget for 2024-25 made it clear that employment was a major priority of the government, with the word getting 23 mentions in the Finance Minister’s speech. With many voters expressing their disenchantment with rising unemployment in the recent election, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has lent his title to a package of schemes on employment.

What is the current state of employment?

According to the Economic Survey, India’s workforce was estimated to be nearly 56.5 crore in 2022-23, of which more than 45% is employed in agriculture, 11.4% in manufacturing, 28.9% in services, and 13% in construction. Officially, the unemployment rate was just 3.2% in that period, but economists note that these statistics do not reflect ground reality, given the large number of underemployed people in the country and the fact that many job seekers continue to work on farms or the unorganised retail sector or as casual labourers. A person is categorised as employed if he pursued any economic activity for at least 30 days in the preceding year.

Almost one in five people in the workforce (18.3%), mostly women, do not receive any wages for their labour, as they are unpaid workers in household enterprises. The urban unemployment rate for the quarter ending March 2024 stood at 6.7%, while youth unemployment stood at 10% in 2022-23. The percentage of people in regular salaried work has dropped from 22.8% in 2017-18 to 20.9% five years later, despite policy efforts to formalise the workforce; many salaried workers do not have access to contracts or social security benefits that usually define a formal worker. The government cites enrolment in the Employees Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) as evidence of formalisation. The EPFO has 7.3 crore contributing subscribers, though total accounts are 30 crore, including inoperative accounts and multiple accounts held by individuals.

What were specific schemes in the package?

Three of the schemes provide employment-linked incentives. The first scheme is meant to support the hiring of first-time employees, with a wage subsidy of up to ₹15,000 paid to the employee, and is expected to cover one crore people. The second is aimed at the hiring of first-time employees, specifically in the manufacturing sector, with wage subsidies to be paid to both employees and employers for four years, with a maximum incentive of 24% of a ₹25,000 monthly wage. The third supports employers who hire new workers, not necessarily first-timers, by reimbursing up to ₹3,000 of their monthly EPFO contribution. In fact, all three schemes are dependent on employees being registered with the EPFO. The fourth scheme aims to upgrade Industrial Training Institutes and boost skilling efforts, with 20 lakh students expected to benefit. The final scheme, which garnered headlines partly because of its similarities to a proposal in the Congress’s manifesto, is aimed at on-the-job skilling, with an ambitious target of one crore youth to be given internships in India’s top companies with a monthly allowance of ₹5,000 for one year, with the companies bearing training costs and 10% of the allowance.

What is in the fine print?

Economists and small industrialists say the conditions and procedures built into these schemes may create obstacles for effective implementation. For instance, the incentive scheme for first-time employees, which offers a ₹15,000 subsidy is paid out in three instalments; the second instalment is only payable if the employee undergoes a compulsory online financial literacy course. “This is impractical. Why should employees in every unrelated sector be expected to do this? And why should this be a condition for this incentive?” asks Himanshu, who teaches at Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU).

More worrying is the clause stating that the subsidy is “to be refunded by the employer if the employment to the first timer ends within 12 months of recruitment.” If the employee switches jobs in 10 months, he has already received the benefit of the scheme, but the employer is required to bear the costs; labour experts say few small employers will be willing to take that risk. The scheme for creating jobs in manufacturing has a minimum requirement of hiring 50 people or 25% of their existing strength, which is a significant number of people to be hired at one go for any firm in return for marginal benefits.

How effective are these schemes likely to be?

These schemes essentially attempt to encourage hiring by reducing the cost of new hires. However, economists note that this is not the main constraint preventing employers from hiring new workers. Anamitra Roychowdhury, a labour economist at JNU, notes that India is already a low wage economy, with real monthly incomes falling over the last five years for the majority of the workforce. “Wage costs are a redundant constraint,” he says, adding that while skilling is certainly needed, it is not the central issue preventing hiring either.

“There is a bigger structural reason why the economy is not able to create jobs, and that is due to insufficient demand, caused by low consumption… and the lack of private investment. And if that comes up, then these costs won’t matter,” notes Amit Basole, professor at Azim Premji University. He adds that these schemes need to be pitched to the niche group of employers for whom such costs do matter, usually small firms with small margins. In fact, Finance Secretary T.V. Somanathan indicated in an interview with The Hindu that this may have been the government’s intention behind the scheme, noting that “fiscal incentives have a role at the margin”.

Editorial | Shuffling the deck: On the Union Budget 2024-25

With regard to formalisation of the workforce, Mr. Basole points out that apart from new people entering the workforce, there are also large numbers seeking to leave agriculture, petty trade, unorganised retail and domestic service. The need is to create formal jobs to keep up with the pace of the supply, which is not happening, as evidenced by the fact that the proportion of salaried workers has actually dropped slightly over the last five years.

What else is needed to create jobs?

“When we think of where we need to create jobs, it should not be in the top 500 companies which are largely capital intensive, but in the MSME (micro, small and medium enterprises) sector, in labour intensive sectors, in small towns. The need is to raise wages there, infuse money into MSMEs, which will have a multiplier effect,” says Mr. Himanshu, recommending a bottoms-up approach. If the urgent requirement is to stimulate demand by increasing consumption, another step could be to raise wages in MGNREGA, the rural jobs scheme, and create a similar employment guarantee scheme for urban workers, says Mr. Roychowdhury. “This would be the more direct approach to kickstart consumption,” he says, noting that the Centre has instead curbed MGNREGA funding.

New Delhi:

Deviating from the stand taken by her counterparts belonging to other parties in the INDIA alliance, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has said she will attend the Niti Aayog general council meeting on Saturday because it is in the interest of her state, adding that she will raise the issues of all opposition-ruled states.

The Niti Aayog general council meeting is one of the few forums where state chief ministers get to meet not just the Prime Minister, who presides over the gathering, but also Union ministers.

The Trinamool Congress chief arrived in Delhi on Friday amid speculation about her cancelling her visit and skipping the Niti Aayog meeting in line with chief ministers of Congress-ruled states and others like Punjab’s Bhagwant Mann, Kerala’s Pinarayi Vijayan and Tamil Nadu’s MK Stalin. 

Stating that she had cancelled, but reconsidered on the advice of senior Trinamool Congress leader Abhishek Banerjee, who is also her nephew, the Bengal chief minister said the Union Budget had been brazenly politicised. 

“They say the Budget shows cooperative federalism, but it is biased politicisation. The Budget is total deprivation of states. You can give some special package to your friends but you can’t deprive opposition states completely,” she asserted, adding that states have to be empowered.

“Centre should only have external affairs, defence and internal security. Finance (is something) they have destroyed,” she claimed. 

‘Scrap Niti Aayog’

Ms Banerjee said that, during the meeting, she would raise the issue of West Bengal “not getting anything” in the Budget as well as the Rs 1.71 lakh crore her government claims the Centre owes the state. She also said it was time the Niti Aayog was scrapped and the Planning Commission was brought back.

“It (Niti Aayog) has no financial implications… The Planning Commission had worked well for India since Independence. It was mooted by Subhash Chandra Bose,” she said. 

On being asked if she was part of the opposition INDIA bloc, she said she was at the national level but the alliance was not needed in the state. “Trinamool Congress is enough to fight the BJP in West Bengal. Nationally, we are with INDIA,” she said.

In the Lok Sabha elections, she said the Congress had gained in states where regional parties are strong and credit should be given to both. She also predicted that, in the upcoming Assembly elections, the Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena faction, which is an INDIA ally, will win in Maharashtra, Congress will emerge victorious in Haryana and Hemant Soren of the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha would remain the Jharkhand chief minister. 

On Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, who is in prison in the liquor policy case, she said she was very concerned about him and others “targeted” by the BJP-ruled government at the Centre. “Only agencies and conspiracies cannot give you political results,” she said.

Ms Banerjee also met Mr Kejriwal’s wife, Sunita, on Friday evening. 

New Delhi:

For a growing economy to meet its needs and aspirations, borrowing is a must, but the focus of the finance ministry under her is to ensure that debt is reduced without affecting growth, Nirmala Sitharaman has told NDTV. 

In an exclusive interview with NDTV’s Editor-In-Chief Sanjay Pugalia on Friday, Ms Sitharaman said fixing a number for the eventual fiscal deficit and working towards it with temporary solutions every year can be one way of going about things, but it is not the right way from a macroeconomic perspective. 

Ms Sitharaman, who became the first finance minister in India’s history to present seven Union Budgets in a row this year, said, “We have chosen a healthy option for getting the fiscal deficit closer to the number. Instead of looking at the number alone, it is also about the way you decide to get there. An obvious method for every country is to reduce debt, but borrowing is a must for a growing economy. The question is how much are you borrowing and where it is being used.”

“Are you using it for asset creation or to service or reduce the existing debt? If the growth in the debt is to be reduced, borrowing more to reduce debt is not the right thing to do. So you borrow and create assets. We have studied the NK Singh Committee report (on fiscal responsibility) and held discussions and decided that we won’t look at the number alone but choose the right path to reduce debt without affecting your growth, desires and aspirations,” she explained.