KIRAN PANDAY

Maoist Chairman Prachanda expressed discontent over the latest budget that was announced last week as no provisions have been made for the martyrs of Jana Andolan II.

The budget made under the guidance of UML'leader' Madhav Kumar Nepal and under the shadow of the Indian government is useless. In his three hour speech on the budget, Finance Minister Surendra Pandey didn't so much as mention the 10-year-long 'people's war', completely undermining its importance. The Maoists had planned to provide the families of the martyrs of the 2006 April Uprising Rs 100,000 annually, adding up to Rs10,00,000 in 10 years, but this is not included in the new budget.

This budget is only a more revised form of the old development campaigns of the early 1990s.This shows that the current government of Nepal is not heading in a new direction.

This time's budget is set to be 285 billion, which is much more than the ones that the Maoists had made last year. It however seems to be allocated disproportionately. For instance the Rs 8 billion set for agriculture will be of no use without proper mobilisation.

The government hopes to raise the foreign grant-in-aid by 63 per cent. With an unstable government this is objective is not likely to be met.