Budget 'status-quoist', does not seek radical reforms for faster growth: Chidambaram

Senior Congress leader and former finance minister P Chidambaram said Monday the Union Budget for 2019-20 is "status-quoist" as it seeks to bring about only incremental reforms and not radical reforms required by the country to grow faster.

Delivering a lecture on the "Union Budget - Will it deliver what it promises", he said there is nothing in the budget to take care of the 20 per cent poorest of the poor.

"This is a status-quoist budget of a government which talks to reform, but the idea of their reform is incremental reform, just bring changes on the margins. This is not the kind of structural reforms and radical reforms that this country needs. What we need are radical reforms and the best example of a radical reformer is Dr Manmohan Singh," he said.

He said the budget does not have any structural reforms, and if there are no structural reforms, it appears that they want to carry on with the existing policies and reforms and yet achieve that kind of growth that this government ...