For Buddha, austerity begins at home

• Halving the Puja bonus to its employees

• Reducing the number of cars, mobiles and trips allowed to officials

• The Chief Minister himself travels chair car on trains instead of booking whole compartments

And, asked this afternoon if cost cut measures were going to affect ministers, Bhattacharya said: ‘‘Just wait and see. What’s your hurry?’’

What is clear, though, is that Bengal can’t afford to wait. The debt mountain means it makes interest payments of Rs 900 crore a month. In the current budget, nearly 40 per cent of total budgetary receipts come from borrowings.

The share of the state’s own tax revenue in total receipts has declined to around 33 per cent from 39 per cent five years ago, and all revenue-earning projections have failed to hit the target.

The first hit were government-paid teachers; earlier this year, their pay day was shifted to the end of the month.

For 30,000 of them who have already retired, it’s almost a beggar’s existence of moving from door to door asking for pension, provident fund and gratuity. Another 10,000 are set to join the ranks of retired by the end of September.

State Finance Minister Asim Dasgupta has said he hopes to save Rs 750 crore by reducing non-plan expenditure in less than five months of the current financial year. And that won’t come from a cutback on perks.

A committee headed by the state chief secretary to review cost cut measures had in a recent report to the government incdicated that these measures would at best fetch the government about Rs 300 crore.

Senior officials admit more stringent steps are needed to bring in the remaining Rs 450 crore.

In the past two years, Dasgupta has announced these measures almost ritualistically, without achieving much.

But this time, he claims things will be different as he has set a target date of November 15 by which he expects to get all the details, right down to the district and block levels, regarding use of cars, telephones, mobiles and other avoidable expenditure which can be pared.

Significantly, the bonus slash and the cost cut actually fit in well with ‘‘the reformed Left Front’’ under Bhattacharya, who admits privatisation is not all wrong and is even shutting down losing units.

But this may be too bitter a pill to ask the state to swallow. The bonus slash, for one, targets government employees, most of whom make up the CPI(M)’s state coordination committee. This committee, as Kolkata Mayor and veteran INTUC leader Subrata Mukherjee points out, ‘‘has been the backbone of the Marxists’ election machinery in successive victories’’.

The pampered government employees are in a fix and this week, when nine of their organisations resorted to a half-day, pen-down strike to protest against the decision at the Secretariat, the Chief Minister promised strict action. The employees have said they will announce their next step in a couple of days.

While Dasgupta blames the Union Government’s policies for the current mess, observers say the state is to blame for its ‘‘profligacy’’. For example, when the Centre decided to implement the Fifth Pay Commission’s award in part, the state was among the first to follow suit. This resulted in a 40-per cent increase in the wage bill. Second, the Left Front has doled out millions of jobs in panchayats, municipalities and local bodies in the name of ‘‘decentralisation’’. Now, even Dasgupta realises that most of these bodies are broke and will be forced to live on subsidies.

Says economist Santosh Bhattacharya: ‘‘The crisis is entirely the outcome of populist measures…No one compelled the Left Front to go for such a pay hike after the 5th Pay Commisson. No one compelled them to enhance the retirement age from 58 to 60 when the Centre did it. And now why pay half bonus? If the situation is bad, why not stop it totally?’’

Meanwhile, what must be rankling Bhattacharya is that it is the ‘saffron’ Central Government’s ‘Puja gift’— a soft loan of Rs 878 crore — that has given it a breather. ‘‘Have the Communists invoked the blessings of

Goddess Durga on the eve of her Puja?’’ asks a sarcastic bureaucrat at Writers’ Building.