It is 330pm on 18th March 2012
As a citizen of a country that prides itself as a high-growth economy and as a nation that is destined to become a global leader in many spheres, I am struck at the singularly non-innovative approach that India’s Parliamentarians, bureaucrats, business leaders and economic thinkers bring to formulating and announcing its Budget (or whatever one should be calling its centrally-administered annual economic and fiscal planning and accounting exercise!)
Why is it that we are still focusing on the arithmetic of tax revenues, revenue expenditure and non-revenue expenditure and the impact of this arithmetic, as the Holy Grail of the Budget? Isn’t there some other more interesting and more-practical way of announcing a nation’s financial intentions and presenting a report card on how these intentions were managed and will continue to be managed?
Say for instance, can we not design a Budget speech for the Finance Minister that will attempt to (a) provide a departmental (and I mean each government department of each ministry) input-output matrix statement of planned resource outlays and expected performance outputs (or what many understand as a scorecard plan), (b) provide a statement of intended as well as committed performance metrics which subsequent Parliament standing committees, CAGs and expert think-tanks can refer to when analysing the performance of individual government departments and suggesting mid-term corrections, if any... and (c) communicate both “a” and “b” through an interesting combination of tools that employ graphical images, specialist communication techniques and reference search technologies, so that all citizens, irrespective of their individual circumstances (visually handicapped, hearing impaired, digitally handicapped, tax-illiterate, financially included only at the margins.........) can all aspire to understand how the government is planning their future prosperity.
I am sure there should be even-more interesting and innovative ways of running through this annual exercise – which, to many of us who are not active contributors looks like a “tamasha”. Can you think of some? Please share your ideas .
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