Politicians can’t afford to have long memories but it was quite amusing to see Congress leaders cry hoarse over the packages given to Andhra and Bihar in the Union budget as “pakodas and jalebis” given to two states while depriving all others. In fact, Congress and the INDI alliance had promised much more than pakodas and jalebis, only that they are in no position to give anything.

They forgot that soon after the recent Lok Sabha elections, when the INDI block was desperately trying to cobble up the necessary numbers for making a government, they tried to win Nitish Kumar over with the promise of his pet “Special Category Status”. The same status was also promised to Andhra 10 years ago by Dr Manmohan Singh on the floor of the Parliament itself when Telangana was carved out of the undivided Andhra Pradesh to serve the electoral interests of the Congress party.

In fact, other promises were also made to Andhra, which had lost most of its revenue when two of its most prosperous districts, Hyderabad and Ranga Reddy, went to Telangana. That bifurcation had left Andhra high and dry, since it got only 46 per cent of the revenue with 58 per cent of the population of the undivided state, while inheriting a huge debt liability of Rs 1.3 lakh crore. The promises were included in the Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Act 2013, which recognised Polavaram Irrigation Project to be a national project whose development was to be taken up by the Centre. In addition, “special financial support” was promised for establishment of a new capital, besides expansion of physical and social infrastructure in backward areas.

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Now Ms Nirmala Sitharaman is just fulfilling these promises to Andhra, by promising to “facilitate special financial support through multilateral development agencies” instead of giving outright grants of Rs 15,000 crore in the current year, and promising more in the future.

She also promised to finance the completion of Polavaram Irrigation Project which is a lifeline for the state’s agriculture. Funds have also been promised for infrastructure of water, power, railways and roads as well as for backward regions, as stated in the Act itself. For Bihar similarly, instead of granting it special category status which would have given additional cash to a state that cannot even utilise its current budgetary allocations, she has taken a much more productive route of providing capital........

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