Rajasthan Economy, Budget and Major Schemes: Exam Notes

Rajasthan is the largest state of India by area, and its economy has been shaped by that geography: a dry west where rainfall is scanty and herding matters as much as farming, a better watered south and east, and beneath both a belt of minerals richer than that of almost any other state. The state therefore earns from four sources above all: agriculture and livestock, mining, tourism, and handicrafts and small industry. For examinations the chapter is a list of pairings, crop with rank, mineral with mine, scheme with year and purpose, together with the constitutional steps by which the state budget is passed.

Agriculture and livestock

Farming in Rajasthan depends on the monsoon and on canal and well irrigation, and the crops chosen are those that stand dry heat. The state is the largest producer in India of bajra, that is pearl millet, of mustard and rapeseed, of guar or cluster bean, of coriander and of fenugreek, and it leads in moth bean, isabgol and henna; the henna of Sojat in Pali district is known across the country. In cumin it comes after Gujarat. Wheat, barley, maize and gram are the chief rabi crops of the canal-irrigated and eastern districts. Livestock is the second pillar: Rajasthan has the largest camel population in the country and is the largest producer of wool, which feeds the carpet and blanket trades of Bikaner and Jaipur, and it is one of the leading milk producing states, with the Saras brand of its dairy federation.

Minerals and energy

Rajasthan is often called the mineral state, because it produces a long list of metallic and non-metallic minerals and is the only source in India of some of them.

In power the state has an unusual mix. Rawatbhata in Chittorgarh district is the site of the Rajasthan Atomic Power Station, where the first unit, built with Canadian collaboration, was the country's early pressurised heavy water reactor; the Suratgarh and Chhabra plants burn coal; and the deserts of the west have given Rajasthan the largest solar and wind potential of any Indian state, with the Bhadla solar park among the largest in the world and wind farms around Jaisalmer. The Barmer basin, where the Mangala field was found in 2004, was the biggest onshore oil discovery in India in many years, and a refinery is being built at Pachpadra in the same district.

Industry, handicrafts and tourism

Industry is concentrated in a belt that follows the Delhi road. Bhilwara is the textile city of the state and a centre of synthetic fabric; Kota has chemicals, fertiliser and the stone that bears its name; Bhiwadi, Neemrana and Alwar in the north-east, close to Delhi, hold engineering and automobile units, with a dedicated Japanese industrial zone at Neemrana; and the Delhi-Mumbai industrial corridor passes through the state, which is why so many new investment regions are planned along it. Industrial estates are developed by the state's industrial development and investment corporation, known as RIICO, and investors are given concessions under the Rajasthan Investment Promotion Scheme. Handicrafts are an export industry in themselves: Jaipur jewellery and blue pottery, Jodhpur furniture, Bikaner and Jaipur carpets, Barmer block prints and Udaipur miniature painting. Tourism, built on the forts, palaces, lakes and desert, is a mainstay of the service sector; the Palace on Wheels began running in 1982, the hill forts of Rajasthan became a World Heritage site in 2013 and the walled city of Jaipur in 2019.

How the state budget is passed

The budget follows the Constitution. Under Article 202 the Governor causes an annual financial statement of receipts and expenditure to be laid before the Vidhan Sabha, and in practice the Finance Minister presents it. Expenditure charged on the Consolidated Fund of the State, such as the salary of the Governor and of High Court judges, is not put to the vote; the rest is voted as demands for grants under Article 203, after which an appropriation bill is passed under Article 204. Article 205 allows supplementary grants during the year, and the state may take a vote on account to meet expenses until the budget is passed. The Consolidated Fund and the Contingency Fund of the State rest on Articles 266 and 267, and the accounts are audited by the Comptroller and Auditor General. Rajasthan has also presented a separate agriculture budget since 2022, in addition to the main budget, and has its own fiscal responsibility legislation that sets limits for the deficit.

Major schemes of the state

Rajasthan has a long record of welfare and transparency schemes, and several of them were taken up afterwards by other states or by the Union.

Two older contributions deserve a line of their own. Panchayati Raj was inaugurated in India at Nagaur in Rajasthan on 2 October 1959, and the campaign of the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan in the villages of the state, demanding that wage records be read out in public, grew into the national movement for the right to information.