There is something unthinkingly unfair about the inescapable political fate that awaits the reception of an interim budget in an election year. In anticipating it to be a vote-catching exercise and slamming it for the same, there is a flawed assumption that the function of politics is anything other than what David Easton succinctly defined as “authoritative allocation of values (tangible as well as intangible)”.

The interim budget for 2019, presented by Union Finance Minister Piyush Goyal, didn’t aspire to depoliticise the exercise. However, where it did err in its political position is in overrating the importance of budgetary announcements for electoral messaging.

“Everything I do, I do it for you” read the banner headline in The Economic Times to describe the last Bharatiya Janata Party-led government’s interim budget in 2004, as the then Finance Minister Jaswant Singh proved generous with populist measures in the election year. It was a government widely expected to return to power before facing a shock defeat. In a different time and frame, Mr Goyal was representing a seemingly jittery government—quite unsure of its poll prospects and expected to press the panic button.

There isn’t enough evidence to show that a well-performing economy, the evaluation of which can differ, rewards the ruling dispensation in Indian elections. There isn’t enough evidence to even generalise that a poorly-performing economy punishes a government in the elections. Perhaps one may think of inflation and loan-waiving sops as two important economic metrics—in that order only—that have made a mark in voting preferences. Economic figures, programmes and performance appraisals haven’t quite been the stuff of winning or losing electoral campaigns.

Irrespective of its significance for voters, the lure of making interim budgets an instrument of electoral communication hasn’t diminished. The interim budget presented today reflects political stock-taking as its key driver. Some key announcements are clearly a response to emerging concerns in the economy and critical scrutiny of the government, while some others mean to pre-empt the promises that the Congress-led Opposition is expected to make over the next few months of election campaigning.

The pressure to neutralise the backlash of rural distress has been mounting on the Centre for quite some time, reinforced by the reverses in the recent Assembly elections. That, however, isn’t empirically supported by any direct connection between voting behaviour and the intensity of farm woes. Despite doing well in areas which were hotbeds of farmer protests, the BJP couldn’t afford to leave the discontent to chance.

It’s in this context that the Pradhan Mantri Kisaan Samman Nidhi can be seen. It’s intended for farmers with less than two hectares and offers ₹6,000 per year as a direct transfer.  With retrospective effect (from last December onward), the benefits will be transferred directly into the bank accounts of beneficiary farmers in three instalments of ₹2,000 each. About 12 crore farmers are expected to benefit from the scheme. The announcement to increase the minimum support price by 1.5 times the production cost of 22 crops can also be been seen as a bid to address concerns over low agricultural income.

The retrospective effect of a direct transfer, seemingly, is intended to ensure that the first instalment carries with it the message of a caring government in the election season. This measure can also be seen as a reflex move to extend the arms of the welfare state in the wake of the Congress reaping the electoral dividends of its farm loan waiver programmes in Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan as well as a coalition partner in Karnataka.

Yet the announced amount of ₹6,000 per annum can work both ways. It swings between the acceptance of “something instead of nothing” to a critical dismissal of “too little, too late”.

Similarly, a response to Rahul Gandhi’s vaguely ambitious—and, to an extent, quixotic—promise of minimum income guarantee can be seen in Goyal’s announcement for a pension scheme for workers of the organised sector. The scheme provides for a monthly pension of ₹3,000 for workers in the unorganised sector to be paid out after retirement and is expected to benefit 10 crore workers in the unorganised sector. Those joining the workforce at 18 years of age will have to contribute a mere ₹55 per month.

The government’s anxiety to retain its sizeable middle class support base seems to have prodded it to go for tax cuts. Goyal stated: “Individual taxpayers having taxable annual income up to ₹5 lakh will get a full tax rebate and therefore will not be required to pay any income tax. As a result, even persons having gross income up to ₹6.50 lakh may not be required to pay any income tax if they make investments in provident funds, specified savings, insurance, etc.”

In a country where a wide range of income groups like to call themselves “middle class”, it’s unclear which section is likely to favourably look at it as relief. More significantly, how electorally important is that relieved section is something which isn’t clear in the poll calculus.

Besides these announcements, Goyal echoed Prime Minister Modi’s recent rediscovery of the benefits of demonetisation. It seems the BJP has decided not to get defensive about the 2016 move and it showed in Goyal’s budget speech. He credited demonetisation as a part of the drive against black money and cited its contribution in increasing the tax collection base. He went on to cite the recent measures to ensure a soft landing of tax reforms like Goods and Services (GST).

With clouds of uncertainty hovering over unemployment figures, Goyal chose to cite a 2-crore membership of the Employees Provident Fund Organisation and 42 crore workers from the unorganised sector as a measure of the engaged workforce. Narendra Modi’s pet themes of the youth turning into job creators found reflection in the finance minister’s emphasis on the facilitation of loans and schemes where more than 70 per cent of the beneficiaries are women.

In a long electoral season of competitive populism that awaits the country, Mr Goyal’s budget sought to tick some predictable boxes. The fact that he sought to do it with lip service to fiscal prudence, and a revised fiscal deficit target kept at 3.4 per cent of the GDP, should still be worrying for the cost of managing a political economy with what Upamanyu Chatterjee once evocatively called “mammaries of the welfare state”. Irrespective of the party in the power, the distributive Big State isn’t going anywhere soon. That’s belying of a deeper promise, perhaps the one less talked about.