70% People Happy With PM Modi’s ‘Political’ Budget: C-Voter Survey

It remains to be seen if this loud cheering gets converted into actual votes for Narendra Modi and the BJP.

Broadly speaking, the economic management by Modi sarkar evokes neutral sentiment among Indians. Due to careful management of food inflation there is lack of focused anger against the central government. However, the lack of anger should not be confused for active support for the NDA-II.

• According to C-Voter post-Budget survey, 70% of respondents are satisfied with the Budget
  
• This is an increase of 25.2% from the last Budget, in which 44.1% were satisfied
  
• 39.7% respondents said the Budget will increase their monthly expenses
  
• The Budget has created optimism with 61.8% of people saying their quality of life will improve in the next one year, only 11.2% said it will deteriorate
• 41.9% people said the Narendra Modi-Piyush Goyal team has delivered better than expected in this Budget
  

Two key parameters of C-Voter’s pre-Budget tracker illustrate this well. In the pre-Budget survey, 48 percent of respondents felt that inflation has gone unchecked, while 37 percent felt that prices had gone down. 13 percent respondents felt that nothing had changed.

Clearly the national sentiment over inflation is divided with a distinct tilt towards the negative side, despite a moderate inflation macro-scenario barring an episode of global crude oil spike.

In the Budget Exit Poll today, the number of people expecting this budget to bring down the inflation shot up to 15 percent, up from the 9.7 percent after last years budget.

The pessimism came down from 58 percent to 44 percent when compared to 2018 Budget Exit Poll numbers.

Would Quality of Life Improve After Budget 2019?

In this year’s Pre-Budget poll, when asked to grade the quality of life of an aam aadmi over the past year, 42 percent of respondents claimed that it had improved while 32 percent claimed that it had deteriorated.

Pointedly, 25 percent of respondents averred no change. It is these neutral respondents that will decide the political course of the nation in 2019.

But in the Budget Exit Poll on Friday, the number of people expecting overall quality of life to go up within a year shot up to a massive 62 percent, up from the 40 percent after last year’s Budget.

Number of people fearing that their quality of life will deteriorate came down from 30 percent to 11 percent when compared to the 2018 Budget Exit Poll numbers.

From these two headline indicators a sharply divided public opinion becomes evident. There are supporters of NDA-II’s economic policies and then there are opponents.

Are People Happy With the Modi Sarkar?

Also, according to the 2018 Budget Exit Poll data, almost 35 percent of Indians felt that Modi sarkar did worse than expected while 31 percent felt that it exceeded their expectations. The same trend line continued till Thursday. But that has changed today all of a sudden, and how.

As of Friday, 42 percent feel Modi sarkar has done much better than expected, while the number of people saying the opposite has gone down to 24 percent.

Under such circumstances, on Thursday a whopping 79 percent of middle class respondents had stated that they could think of supporting NDA-II again if it conceded sops in Budget 2019.

These included exempting income up to Rs 5 lakh from income tax, implementing universal basic income, tax exemption to medical allowance and GST relief in purchase of a house among many others. Going by the overall rating of the Union Budget this year, it seems the political side of the Budget has delivered.

How Did People Rate This Budget?

When asked to rate the Union Budget on a scale of 0 to 10, the respondents – over the last four years – gave it 6.6, 6.3, 5.2 and 4.7.

The Modi government’s score of 4.7 in 2018 was in fact lower than the 4.8 the UPA’s last Budget scored in 2013-2014. Needless to say, it was a downwards spiral that must have rung alarm bells in the government.

Today, the public has rated it a handsome 7.0 out of 10, which is a huge jump from every perspective.

Last year, as many as 64.4 percent of respondents had said the Budget would push up their monthly expenses and only 15.9 percent had said it would allow them to save further.

Today, that number has shot up to more than double, as 33 percent of respondents have said they would be able to save more, riding on the tax-free income. The number of those fearing inflation has come down to 39 percent now when compared to 64 percent in last year’s Budget Exit Poll.

In our budget survey we also enquired about aspirational income levels for an average family of four. The responses varied according to the socio-economic parameters of the state concerned.

Logically, the richer states registered higher income responses while the poorer ones registered lower income responses.

Modi’s Last Budget Ahead of LS Polls Delivers a Punch

All along in the last 15 years, the annual amount narrated by Indians was much more than the taxable income stated by the Government of India. More than 80 percent of respondents, who’ve participated in the survey since the last 15 years, have maintained that a certain amount of income should be made tax-free.

This is the first time in 15 years that the Budget Tracker is reporting the other way round. The annual desired income for an average middle-class living was stated to be around Rs 4 lakh for a family of four in this year’s Pre-Budget Survey.

Now with the tax-rebate doubled to Rs 5 lakh, no wonder in the Post-Budget Exit Poll, almost 70 percent of respondents have expressed their satisfaction. To put it in context, the satisfaction number with the Modi government’s Budget last year was a pathetic 44 percent, which was lower than the 46 percent given to the last Budget of Manmohan Singh’s government.

So the ‘political’ Budget has certainly delivered its punch. Now, it remains to be seen if this loud cheering gets converted into actual votes for Modi.

(Views expressed are the authors’ own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)