India’s far-right, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government has tabled a budget for the fiscal year beginning April 1 that combines deepening austerity for working people with a massive 15 percent hike in military spending and huge subsidies and stimulus for Indian big business.

Faced with intensifying global strategic conflict and growing economic turbulence, including Trump’s tariff war, the Indian bourgeoisie is determined to intensify the exploitation of the working class and rural poor.

In the run up to the budget, the government introduced legislation to abolish the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee, which for the past two decades has provided a vital lifeline for tens of millions of small farmers and agricultural labourers. Under the program that will replace it, the state is no longer legally obligated to provide 100 days of unskilled labour per year to one member of every rural household. The central government has shifted much of the responsibility for funding its rural relief program onto the financially hard-pressed state governments. Furthermore, with the express aim of depressing rural wages, the new program is to be entirely suspended during the 60 peak days of the agricultural calendar.