The Congress on Thursday dismissed Budget 2018 as mere “lip service to farmers”. “The government has attempted to pay lip service to farmers and to other marginalised sections of society, but it is a classical case of too less and completely at the inappropriate time,” ANI quoted Congress leader Manish Tewari as saying.

For this alleged failure, another Congress leader and a former finance minister himself, P Chidambaram, laid the blame squarely at minister Arun Jaitley’s doorstep, reported PTI: ” Finance minister fails fiscal consolidation test. This failure will have serious consequences.”

Former Prime Minister HD Dewe Gowda, of the Janata Dal (S), said that the while attention has been paid to farmers, it may just not be enough.

The finance minister “has tried to make improvements for farmers but the problems of farmers and rural people are enormous. Measures may not be sufficient,” said Gowda.

Budget 2018, presented by Jaitley in Parliament today, appeared largely focused on the uplift of the agricultural sector, along with a major push to extend healthcare and education in the country.  He announced that the minimum support price of all Kharif crops will be raised to at least 1.5 times that of their production cost.

The Budget’s health scheme, which will cover 10 crore poor families, is set to become the world’s largest government-funded health protection scheme, the ruling BJP said.