Weve had our fill of empty promises

Modi may once again disregard the rules and offer sops in the interim budget but, as always, he is unlikely to keep his promises

The -United India- rally in Kolkata on Saturday was the first step to dislodging Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He, of course, never stopped being in election mode. But the battle bugle has sounded for the next parliamentary election, the schedule for which the Election Commission may announce in early March. Modi has initiated counter-measures: the first was the 10 per cent reservations in jobs and higher education for economically weaker sections of the general category, code for the forward castes.

The DMK, which participated in the -United India- rally, has gone to court against this, saying that reservations were mandated by the Constitution as a measure of social justice, not to remedy economic inequality. Modi is expected to announce measures for farmers, who snatched from his party-s hands three states in December. This may include income-supplementing programmes of the kind that exist in Telangana, Odisha and Jharkhand.

It may be too little, too late; you can see the panic on Modi-s face on TV during his rally-a-day addresses. Many fear that to counter the new UP alliance of the Samajwadi Party-s Akhilesh Yadav and the Bahujan Samaj Party-s Mayawati, Modi will use the RBI-s funds of R70,000 crore over which his hand-picked former central bank governor, Urijit Patel, quit to put R10,000 or so in every voter-s account: a far cry from the R15 lakh he promised in 2013, but given the cow-belt-s endemic poverty, it will no doubt be appreciated.

Given Modi-s desperation to get re-elected, there is talk of going beyond the interim budget that is to be presented on February 1. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley is in the US for treatment for some potentially-serious illness, and there is speculation he may not return in time to present the interim budget in which case, stepney Piyush Goyal will do the honours. There is speculation the budget speech will be extended as a sort of election manifesto in which case, it may be Modi himself who gives the budget speech. There is speculation that the interim budget will give sops to farmers, as well as small and medium enterprises, whose back was broken by the nutty November 2016 demonetisation the very blunder that will sink Modi. There is speculation that there will be relief in income tax, and heavy outlays in the social sector.

All these measures are unconstitutional. The media, which has been only too obliging to this government-s whims and fancies, has keenly emphasised that presenting a full budget two to three months before the parliamentary election is a "moral" issue and not a constitutional one. This is nonsense.

There is a reason that past governments facing elections have not presented full budgets. The budget presents an account of expenditure and earnings of the central government in the past year, and gives a plan of how it will proceed in the coming year. Modi wants the full budget to indicate that he is confident about returning to power and, following that, endorsing and implementing the budget proposals, but self-confidence is not the same thing as a parliamentary vote of confidence, which can now only come in the next Lok Sabha, in May or June.

However, all that Modi can constitutionally do is to, on the basis of the expenditures of the past 12 months, propose expenditure for the next three months in a "vote-on-account": a sort of measure to keep the cash register of government open unlike in the US, which is now reeling under a government shutdown that threatens to derail their GDP growth. It cannot propose new taxation in the Finance Bill, or new services under the expenditure head.

This is not legal. Jaitley might be relieved if he is not party to this. Modi may proceed with this brazen disregard for rules and law because this has been the defining characteristic of his government. Claiming to be a strong leader who is not bogged down by consultations or partners, he has inflicted the lunatic demonetisation; the ill-prepared GST that has been amended nearly 1,000 times; and the single-handed renegotiation of a defence deal that unnecessarily cost India much more than it should have, and that will benefit an industrial crony of Modi-s.

These points were raised during the -United India- rally on Saturday, and you can expect them to be reiterated again and again over the next three months. Andhra Pradesh CM N Chandrababu Naidu put it succinctly when he called Modi a "publicity PM" rather than a performing PM; Bihar opposition leader Tejaswi Yadav added that Modi was a "manufacturer, promoter and distributor of lies". This rhetoric has emerged from a narrative Modi himself created out of unmet expectations. All the opposition need do is remind the voter that Modi-s budget promises are unlikely to be kept. No wonder Modi looks stressed.

Aditya Sinha is a writer and columnist. His latest book -India Unmade: How the Modi Government Broke the Economy-, with Yashwant Sinha, is out now. He tweets @autumnshade Send your feedback to mailbag@mid-day.com

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