New Delhi [India], February 11 (ANI): Congress leader Shashi Tharoor on Thursday slammed the Union Budget as a 'squandered opportunity', alleging that it ignores unemployment, rising living costs, and inequality and offers little to address the real struggles and aspirations of the common man.

Initiating the debate in Lok Sabha on the Union Budget 2026-27, Tharoor also slammed the Interim Trade Agreement with the United States, stating that 'it appears far less like a free trade agreement and far more like a pre-committed purchase that overturns the very idea of reciprocity'.

'How can one justify a so-called reciprocal tariff structure where tariffs of 18 per cent apply on one side and zero on the other? At a moment when India's total bilateral trade with the US is approximately 130 billion U.S. dollars and our trade surplus is only about 45 billion US dollars, how have we undertaken to purchase 500 billion US dollars' worth of American goods over five years? This converts a surplus into a prolonged deficit not through market forces, but through executive assurances. No major economy has ever voluntarily undermined its own trade leverage in this fashion,' he said.

'While the United States continues to levy import duties of up to 18 per cent, we appear - based on the joint US-India statement now circulating - to have agreed to slash our tariffs to near-zero levels, open up agriculture, weaken data localisation norms, dilute intellectual property protections, and even redirect strategic energy imports, particularly away from Russia, in order to meet purchase commitments. This cannot be described as strategic balancing. It amounts to economic pre-emption,' he added.

The Congress leader said that Parliament has not been informed how farmers, MSMEs, and domestic industry will be safeguarded, nor why India has willingly relinquished its negotiating strength without securing proportionate market access or policy flexibility in return.

'I am aware the Government will ask us to wait for the final agreement expected in mid-March, but these concerns exist today and must be acknowledged now. The Government's claim that India has obtained a better deal than China, Vietnam, or other Asian economies does not bear scrutiny,' he said.

He said while India may have received tariff reductions of one or two percentage points, no East Asian economy has agreed to deliberately erode its trade surplus with the US through guaranteed purchase obligations.

'In fact, China, Vietnam, and several ASEAN nations have expanded their trade surpluses with the U.S. even amid escalating trade tensions. This ambiguity directly affects the credibility of the Budget itself,' he said.

Tharoor said the Government speaks endlessly of welfare, but its spending tells a very different story.

'Media reports show that of the over Rs.5 lakh crore budgeted for 53 major welfare and infrastructure schemes last year, barely 41 per cent was spent in the first nine months of the fiscal year. Take the Jal Jeevan Mission, allotted Rs.67,000 crore, it managed to spend an astonishingly low Rs.31 crore in nine months. The much-touted PM Schools for Rising India Scheme spent only Rs.473 crore out of Rs.7,500 crore,' he said.

'More shocking of all, the Pradhan Mantri Anusuchit Jaati Abhyudaya Yojana, meant for the socio-economic upliftment of the Scheduled Castes, utilised merely Rs.40 crore out of Rs.2,140 crore. This is not governance, this is headline management,' he added.

He said despite agriculture contributing 16 per cent to 17 per cent of GDP, it will receive only

three per cent of this Union Budget, 1.62 lakh crore, which is a 5.1 per cent cut

from last year's 1.71 lakh crore.

'This underinvestment is all the more alarming, given the existential threats facing Indian agriculture today,' he said.

Tharoor said any discourse on the workers of our country stands incomplete without a discussion on MGNREGA, now replaced by the ambitious VB-G RAM G Act.

'It increases guaranteed workdays from 100 to 125 and introduces weekly wage payments, but at the same time hollows out the legal employment guarantee,' he said.

'While MGNREGA was demand-driven, fully Centrally funded for unskilled wages, and rooted in decentralised planning, the new Act caps Central funding through State-wise normative allocations, shifts 40 per cent of wage costs to most States, and allows the scheme to be paused for up to 60 days during peak agricultural seasons, thereby shrinking the real window of guaranteed work,' he added.

Tharoor said once a State's allocation is exhausted, workers' statutory right to employment effectively ends.

'This converts an open-ended, rights-based programme into a budget-restricted, Centrally rationed scheme where fiscal ceilings override legal entitlements,' he said.

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman is expected to reply to the debate on Wednesday. (ANI)