Rs 11,967 crore shall form part of the plan budget. This sum had stood at Rs 9683 crore last FY. What is noteworthy is the fact that the orientation of the Bengal budgets with the successive Left Front governments in office has been directed towards the empowerment of the poor and the downtrodden, the weaker sections and the weaker economic groups, cutting across lines of caste, gender, religion, community, and arching over the World Bank pontificating gravely and worriedly about the Third World urban-rural divide.
The state domestic product growth rate is expected to be nothing less than 9 per cent, just under the double-digit figure that may make the economy on the way to overheating. The total number of employment to be generated makes for hopeful reading for the mass of the people, while throwing into theoretical disarray the right-wing economists of gloom and doom (and their so-called left-leaning underlings) who seek to prop up desperately the thesis of liberalisation of economy at every functional and political level.
The employment figures predicted, and here we are speaking of direct employment, one should recall, are 3 lakh in agriculture; 2.5 lakh in industries; and 3 lakh in self-help groups and self-employment schemes. The Left Front government realises that the scope for employment before the poor and the toiling masses depend largely on the amount of empowerment they possess at the ground level, in the implementational schema.
