Figure this one out

The demands for rollbacks have come once again fast on the heels of the budget presentation itself. In principle this has a negative impact on the exercise, although perhaps inevitable given democratic pulls and pressures. More fundamental is the question: What role does the budget perform? As the finance minister put it, the budget goes beyond mere arithmetic to express government policy. It is also well recognised that the central aim of budgeting is to ensure expenditure control. Unfortunately, recent trends provide little confidence that either of these goals is being met. The classical example is, of course, the case of the defence ministry where, in a curious hat trick, a huge sum between Rs 8,000 and 9,000 crore of the approved budget is not being spent, for whatever reasons. What is of concern is that even in areas like social welfare, government spending has fallen far short of what the same government budgeted for.

Is this because the concerned ministries are unable to spend what they planned for, or because the finance ministry has not approved specific expenditure catered for in the sanctioned budget? Either way it demonstrates an institutional crisis of management that should be accorded the most serious attention. Once again the example of defence may be useful here. A 15-year perspective plan provides the basis for a specific 5-year Defence Plan, the latter presumably approved by the Cabinet with requisite financial resources ahead of the plan period. Such a plan would not be worth the paper it is written on if financial resources are not committed and utilised for the purpose for which they are approved. But large variations between the budget estimates, the year-end revised estimates, and the actual expenditure for the year, would defeat the very purpose of budget as a policy statement, or as an instrument of expenditure control.

The crisis of institutional management has arisen partly because of complex procedures and the unwillingness to take decisions for fear of future inquiries, and/or the very structure of financial-budgetary control. To take defence again, compared to say the 10-year period between 1986-95 when the gap between the budgeted and actual expenditure averaged around a 4 per cent annual increase, we are now seeing an average of 14 per cent of the defence budget being unspent for the past three consecutive years in spite of nearly 80 per cent of the expenditure being pre-committed! The shortfall in expenditure against the allocations under the capital head has averaged a massive 30 per cent for three years. Such variations make a mockery of the budgeting system itself.