A budget of schemes, not outcomes

Across sectors the budget repeatedly lists schemes and allocations but rarely explains the outcomes they are meant to deliver.

Budget speeches should not merely list expenditures and schemes, punctuated with slogans and quotations. For a state like Karnataka—whose economy is larger than that of many countries—citizens expect something more: a clear vision, a strategy for growth, and measurable outcomes for the taxpayer’s money.

Unfortunately, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah’s budget for 2026–27 offers little of that. Instead, it reads largely as a catalogue of activities: “This sector is important; we will spend this much.” What is missing is accountability. What will actually change because of this spending?

Across sectors—agriculture, education, healthcare, infrastructure, and industry—the budget repeatedly lists schemes and allocations but rarely explains the outcomes they are meant to deliver. That absence of measurable goals is the single biggest weakness of the budget.

Take agriculture. The government promises micro-irrigation and farm machinery support for lakhs of farmers and announces dozens of irrigation works. But what will this achieve? How much will agricultural productivity rise? How many additional hectares will be irrigated? How much will farmer incomes improve? Without such targets, it becomes impossible to judge whether public spending is delivering results.

The same pattern appears in animal husbandry. The budget proposes upgrading 15 veterinary hospitals into polyclinics at a cost of Rs 10 crore. But what difference will this upgrade make for livestock productivity or farmer incomes? And when Karnataka has more than 230 taluks, upgrading just a handful of facilities will hardly change the state-wide picture.

Education policy shows a similar lack of clarity. The government proposes converting 800 government schools into Karnataka Public Schools with an expenditure of Rs 3,900 crore over three years. Yet the budget does not explain what improvement in learning outcomes this investment will deliver.

Similarly, Rs 841 crore has been allocated to prepare 26,821 students for competitive examinations. That works out to more than Rs 3 lakh per student. While any spending on building a better future for children is welcome, the result this spending is expected to produce should also be spelt out.

In Delhi, when the Aam Aadmi Party government undertook a transformation of government schools, the goal was clear: improve learning outcomes. Within a decade, government school results improved so much that CBSE pass percentages were higher than many private schools, and thousands of students entered top universities and professional institutions.

The real challenge is not merely spending money but improving outcomes and holding the system accountable for results.

Some announcements in the budget also raise serious questions about policy thinking. For instance, ₹31 crore has been allocated to upgrade “girls’ infrastructure” in 31 colleges where girls’ enrolment exceeds 50 per cent. But what about colleges where girls’ enrolment is lower? Shouldn’t adequate infrastructure for girls be available in every institution?

The budget also raises concerns about efficiency in public spending. The government proposes constructing a 450-bed hospital in Karwar at a cost of Rs 198 crore — roughly Rs 44 lakh per bed. In Delhi, world-class government hospitals have been built at around Rs 20 lakh per bed, less than half that cost.

Similarly, the state proposes to spend about Rs 17,000–18,000 crore on the controversial 17-kilometre north–south tunnel road in Bengaluru — nearly Rs 1,000 crore per kilometre. Metro rail infrastructure, by contrast, typically costs about Rs 700–750 crore per kilometre and serves far larger numbers of commuters. When resources are limited, expanding mass transit may be a far more sensible priority than expensive tunnel projects.

More worrying is the lack of focus on employment. The budget highlights Rs 30,000 crore of private investment in the Dharwad node of the Mumbai–Bengaluru Industrial Corridor, expected to generate about 75,000 jobs. That implies roughly Rs 40 lakh of investment for each job created.

Karnataka urgently needs job-creating sectors that absorb large numbers of young workers. Export-oriented apparel parks, toy manufacturing clusters and tourism could generate employment at scale. Yet these sectors receive little strategic attention in the budget.

Karnataka’s tourism potential alone could generate many times the income it does today if the state invested systematically in airports, hospitality infrastructure, destination development and global marketing.

A state budget should answer a simple question: what do we want to have achieved by next year (and then five or ten years from now) from the decisions we take today?

On that fundamental question, this budget remains silent.

(The writer is the treasurer, AAP Karnataka)

(Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.)