Letter from Editor

Like millions of citizens across the country, every February when the weather is fine and the national mood is generally upbeat, I look forward to the presentation of the Union government’s annual budget of the following year beginning April 1. And like millions of citizens countrywide, I’m disappointed, and perhaps confused as well.

Opinions on the purpose and presentation format of the budgets of the Union and state governments differ. One school of thought believes that the budget of governments should be bald statements of the revenue generation and expenditure plans of the coming year, and a review of the government’s financial performance in the year past. On the other hand another school of thought believes that government budgets, especially of the Union government, need to be more than mere financial statements. They should also reflect the philosophy, ideology and socio-economic development plans of the government.

While I subscribe to the latter school of thought, the format in which the Union budget is presented to the citizenry every year is a matter of great disappointment. First, while the Union budget provides a fairly clear statement of government revenue and expenditure, one can’t help feeling that it conceals more than it reveals. For instance there is no clear picture of the undoubtedly high cost of governance which is perhaps deliberately lumped together under the umbrella of revenue expenditure, i.e not plan or assets creation expenditure, which by the way for the past several years has been far in excess of the total tax and other income of the Union government. According to my information, New Delhi spends more on the salaries, wages, perquisites and pensions of 3.8 million Central government servants (armed forces personnel excluded) than it does for the education of the country’s 450 million children below 18 years of age. But there is no indication of the actual cost of the government establishment in the recently presented — or any other — Union budget. Draw your own conclusions.

Satisfactory rendering of accounts apart, even in terms of outlining the incumbent Congress-led UPA coalition government’s development philosophy, Budget 2007-08 is a huge let-down. After reading the finance minister’s 112,800 word budget address and interviewing economists and experts, I’m still not sure what are the UPA government’s development priorities. If they are agriculture and education as proclaimed, the provisions made in Budget 2007-08 for these high priority sectors are pathetically inadequate. For the education and development of the country’s youth (below 24 years of age) who constitute over half the population and a high-potential resource, EducationWorld (February) had presented a financial roadmap to the finance minister, his numerous advisors and the public. I am prepared to defend it, if called upon.

Perhaps our special report in this issue is a related story. It’s arguable that the country and its finances would have been in better shape if the education system had paid greater attention to the development of its gifted children, whose number is estimated at a massive 13 million countrywide. But as our can-do assistant editor Summiya Yasmeen elaborates in this first-of-its-type feature, it’s still not too late to do so.

Dilip Thakore