Now a Rollback Singh

Mercy be to the government whose economic policy is shaped by the likes of a Madan Lal Khurana, lobbyist par excellence. There is nothing wr...

Mercy be to the government whose economic policy is shaped by the likes of a Madan Lal Khurana, lobbyist par excellence. There is nothing wrong in a democracy if the finance minister alters his annual budget proposals in deference to the aspirations of the people and the wisdom of elected representatives. But there is something odd when a finance minister takes great credit at the time of the presentation of his budget for the consultative process through which the fiscal strategy has gone, when principles are invoked and a strategy spelt out, when credit is claimed for pragmatism over theory, and then the government yields to lobby pressure.

Consider the kind of fine-tuning that Jaswant Singh has agreed to: replacement of ad valorem duty on branded and packed vanaspati by a specific rate; reduction in custom duty on RBD palm oil from 85 per cent to 70 per cent; no tax deduction at source on interest awarded on accident compensation up to Rs 50,000; concessions on hand pumps, concessions to tile manufacturers; exemption from excise duty for unprocessed fabrics and unbranded woven and knitted readymade garments up to the first clearance of Rs 25 lakh manufactured by handlooms with a turnover of Rs 30 lakh, etc, etc, etc. So what is the process by which the finance ministry comes to these decisions? Plea, petition, prayer and protest? Clearly, many men were at work in North Block processing all the requests that came from a variety of disaffected parties through a variety of impassioned petitioners. To top it all there is the further retreat on the date for the introduction of value-added taxation, thanks to the untiring efforts of the irrepressible Madan Lal Khurana. So who needs a finance ministry when the BJP8217;s backroom boys can do all the fiscal policy fixing?

Pity finance minister Jaswant Singh. He must have hoped that he would not get stuck with his predecessor8217;s pre-fix, 8216;8216;rollback8217;8217;, given his stature within the party. He ought to have known that it was not Yashwant Sinha who was rolling back his own budget proposals, even if he had to take the flak for it, but his political party that functions like a conglomerate of sectional interests with no policy perspective on any subject other than Hindutva. When sectional interests take charge of policy making in a coalition government comprising of parties that are themselves coalitions of contending interests, what you get is confusion. So while we have dubbed Singh also as 8216;8216;rollback Singh8217;8217;, the fact is that it is not the finance minister who is confused about what he wants to do but the political party to which he belongs. So one rollback budget follows another, as lobbyists displace policy makers in North Block.