JOIN USThe budgets need more accountability built into them and the format of the annual presentation needs a total makeover.
The Union budget for 2012-13 will be presented on Thursday. Whenever it is time for the budget, people and organisations come out with their expectations or ‘wish lists.’ Unfortunately, the wish-lists are generally pleas to ‘Dear finance minister’ for some small tax relief here and a concession there. Basically, most such requests tend be micro-issues concerning a problem with a sub-sector of an industry within an industry.
The main issues with a major industry are well-known anyway. For instance, the contours of what boost the IT & ITES sector needs are known to the government. It does not need special telling or wishing. Similarly, what ails the manufacturing sector is known to all concerned ministries at the centre. Even most of the remedies are known. The industry associations and lobbies are, in any case, supposed to be in constant touch with the government.
While it is the large organised industry segments that voice their concerns, the lobby of large farmers also gets heard.
It is the small, almost voiceless segment of marginal farmers, rural small business persons, poor and very poor from both the rural and urban areas and the tribal people who are isolated from the mainstream whose voice seldom gets heard. Most of these do not even know how to represent their case. Those who know that they have problems do not know that there is a ‘Pranab babu’ to whom the concerns could be addressed.
It is the large segments of ‘haves’ the budget allocates to, who get discussed prior to, during and after the budget. Steel sector got this, mining got that, pharmaceuticals did not get something else – the discussions go on ad infinitum about the possible ramifications of all such allocations made in a budget. Such discussions are rarely ever about the hungry, malnourished, poor, uneducated or the never permanently employed. Budgets come and go. There are neither representations nor reviews of their status.
It has taken our successive governments at the centre almost 65 years to feel that we need to double the budget allocations for basic health care. It will probably take another five-year plan or two to give any substantive relief to the hungry. Of course, without resolving the problem of hunger and malnutrition of young children and mothers, how will we handle the basic health care is a question to be asked. A few more five-year plans may be needed for really taking care of our primary and secondary schooling.
Limited plan
It is true that a Union budget is a limited plan, in the sense that it is a plan for the next financial year. The time-period is too short. Even so, a financial budget is the right place where such issues should get addressed. The real test of intent is in providing funds for a vital activity. Of course, such funds have to be provided in budget after budget. Government has to decide on its priorities – long term priorities in the main. It, then, has to ideate programmes to fulfill those priorities. These programmes have to be nurtured by adequate funding year after year. The programmes have to be implemented properly and timely.
A project is not defined only by its cost. It has its well-defined activities and milestones to be achieved or completed by a pre-defined time. The proof of the pudding is in eating it. Is it too much to expect that a budget presented in 2012 should spell out as to what or how much can be achieved in each of the activities/programmes where the funds are being allocated? Simple ‘project management’ principles have to be applied to the Union budget.
Every organisation, in the private sector and public sector, does it routinely. Why should it not be done in the case of the Union budget? However, our governments – central and state level – are satisfied with allocation of funds and ‘spending’ them. Whole exercise is usually about what was allocated and what was spent. How was it spent, what came of it, whether the output was as per expectations, what were the success stories and problems if any, are some of the vital aspects that are never presented or discussed in public.
Union budgets should present the achievements under each category of funds used for various major activities. If so many thousands of crores were spent on elementary education last year, then it should state as to what was the achievement in elementary education during the year just gone by. If during the last year ‘X’ amount was spent on, say, the rural hospitals, the present budget must state the extent of progress also. Mere numbers regarding funds have no meaning except to arouse the ‘feel good’ factor that ‘something good is being planned during the next year for my interested sector or sub-sector’. Successive finance ministers have been stirring up this good feeling of a promise of hope. However, none of the budgets have ever revisited the ‘hope’ to check and report whether it has been realised and to what extent.
Mere ‘allocation’ of funds indicates very little. An allocation has to be used and properly implemented and the performance noted or monitored and evaluated for giving direction for next year’s allocation and implementation. People will no more be satisfied with a play of numbers and loose promises. The annual Union budgets need more accountability built into them. The format of the annual presentation of budget needs a total makeover.
(The writer is a former professor at IIM, Bangalore)