Overview: Taking Stock
9
Labour Legislation should also be reviewed
to ensure that workers get a fair deal and
‘decent work’. In case of microenterprises
and own account units, facilitating access to
markets (whether for inputs, outputs, credit
or technology) is a prime requirement and
not Subsidy Schemes that keep the enterprises
barely alive on artificial support systems.
Public finances
Government’s spending: Shifting from
subsidies to productive areas
The spending by government has, over
the last many years, shifted from non-plan
expenditure to non-productive areas. While
most of these expenditures are unavoidable,
there have been profligate tendencies in
some ill-designed large programmes. The
investments in productive capital stock have
to increase. This requires that the govern-
ment finds resources that can be invested to
boost capital formation. The high subsidy
budget carried on for several years now
is limiting the capacity for investments in
future growth and development.
Of the subsidied food, fertiliser and
oil subsidies accounted for
`
2,539 billion
in 2014–15 and the current year’s budget
rightly slashed it down by about 10 per cent
(Table 1.6). But the Food Subsidy Bill is as
Figure 1.3:
Rural wage growth
Source:
Based on Labour Bureau data. Excerpted from
Economic Survey 2014–15
, Ministry of Finance, GoI.
Figure 1.4:
CPI for rural labourers
Source:
Labour Bureau, GoI.
Nov–05
0
5
10
15
20
25
Nov–06
Nov–07
Nov–08
Nov–09
Nov–10
Nov–11
Nov–12
Nov–13
Nov–14
0.0
2.0
4.0
6.0
8.0
10.0
12.0
14.0
16.0
2006–07 2007–08 2008–09 2009–10 2010–11 2011–12 2012–13 2013–14
