The Budget Dialogue programme began with the presentation by CBGA on five thematic areas, like observation on resource mobilisation, centre state sharing of resources, budget for social sectors, economic sectors and budget for marginalisation. It was organised by Centre for Budget and Governance Accountability (CBGA), at India Islamic Cultural Centre in the Capital on February 3.
Professor Aasha Kapur Mehta, visiting Professor at Institute for Human Development, Delhi in her opening remark, said, “What I liked about the budget was the three pillars where it starts talking about aspiration, economic development and caring society. But when I look at gender issues in the context of the budget, it says nothing about aspiration, economic development but basically says something about caring society. There is a huge gap between words and translating those words into action and the largest gap is about India being a caring society. Really caring society would be caring in so many dimensions, instead what we have got under this rubric is so limited that it does not qualify as caring.”
Jayati Ghosh, Chairperson of the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, while speaking during the discussion, said, “For the last two years this government has been systematically lying to us in the budget documents. None of these numbers means anything because it is not the actual number. When the budget is presented, we do not actually know what is going to be the revenue and expenditure for the last quarter. The data that is available is only till December. In the past there was always some discrepancy between the revised estimate that are presented in the budget and the actuals. We now have massive discrepancies. Last year there was a discrepancy in tax and revenue receipts 1.7 lakh crore(one and half per cent of the GDP). Accordingly, there was also very big decline in the expenditure, 1.4 lakh crore.”
On the spending, Ghosh said, let us find out what the government is actually doing on spending rather than what it is pretending to do every year. In terms of budgetary allocation very big part of it is what it is doing to the state governments. And that is really something which is affecting across the board the condition of the social sectors in the county through the centrally sponsored schemes, of course. But the very fact that the reduced fiscal transfer to the states, something that is huge, is not just for federalism but for basic democracy and citizens’ rights and social and economic rights.
Dr. T. Haque, a distinguished professor at the Council for Social Development and Praveen Jha of Jawaharlal Nehru University who was moderating the dialogue, also shared their views.