For the journalist there are so many thing that are unpredictable like terrorist attacks, earthquakes and floods, plane crashes, even political somersaults. But one event is awaited with bated breath: the annual central budget. Governments may come and governments may go, but the annual budget is as predictable as sunrise in the morning. It does not matter who is in power in Delhi, or what the Finance Minister’s predilections are. One hardly expected Dr Manmohan Singh’s first budget crafted under the direction of PV Narasimha Rao to make news. But that it did. That the latest budget has failed to do so is cause for concern, though now Dr Singh is the Prime Minister and Shri Pranab Mukherjee is an old hand. In fact, the 2009 budget he has presented is his fourth one, though he will never be able to break Morarji Desai’s record.
Shri Mukherjee, however, cannot be too happy with the media reaction. The Times of India (July 7), for instance, noted: “If budgets are about vision, Mukherjee’s exercise falls short.” Said the paper: “It pays lip service to private investment… but there is no big signal to spur private demand.” It conceded that the re-stated commitment to the roll-out of the goods and services tax is a good news with the ‘major boosters’ being “removal of surcharge on personal income tax, enhanced groups-specific exemptions and abolition of the fringe-benefit tax”. At the same time the paper said “running multiple schemes is inefficient and will add to the subsidy bill” and “with the fiscal deficit pegged at a disturbing 6.8 per cent of GDP, Mukherjee’s nonchalance vis-a-vis public debt may not be widely shared”. The paper said that with growth hit by the downturn, it needs more than wagers. “It needs well-targeted public spending and the reform route to resource mobilisation.”
The Free Press Journal was pretty hard-hitting. It said: “It (the budget) is neither fish nor fowl. Really the budget is a huge come-down… It lacks a clear focus, a philosophy, sense of direction… because it is oblivious of the mantra of economic reform, fiscal discipline, overhaul of the tax-structure (and) is a throwback to those strained economic times a quarter century ago.” Mukherjee’s budget, said the paper, read “as if he was caught in a time warp”. The attack was long and merciless, giving instance after instance of conceived errors and shortcomings and ended up with something more than just a rebuke. Said the paper: “The budget offers no evidence that it appreciates the central principle in modern economics which, put simply states that growth alone holds the key to poverty alleviation.”
Deccan Herald lambasted Mukherjee’s budget as being “long in generalities and short on specifics” and charged him with opting “for caution in place of courage” and failing “to present an agenda to stimulate growth in all sectors of the economy” even while lauding “the reduction of interest on farmers’ loans” and tax exemptions on income tax. In the same paper, economist Prem Shankar Jha, in a edit page article, said that under the pretext of stimulating the economy, Mukherjee has presented “one of the most populist budgets that the country has ever known” with “every head of social expenditure seeing increases of outlays of 40 to 144 per cent. Said Jha: “If anything is needed to make sure that interest rates do not fall this year and investment stagnates, it is this.” Jha’s description of the budget is: “Business-as-usual.” Not very flattering.
The Hindu (July 7) as usual sounded ‘balanced’. “Where the budget falls short is in the area of stimulating growth”, said the paper, cautiously adding: There is nothing in the budget that is particularly significant or dramatic enough to change the mood of uncertainty and pessimism that has gripped business and industry”. The paper pointed out that “the sharp cuts in excise duties effected at the beginning of the slow-down have not been reversed” and “the increase in the personal income tax exemption limit by Rs 10,000 is no more than a gesture to the middle class”. In an Op-Ed article in The Hindu, S Gurumurthy said in marked acerbity that “when the numbers hidden deep inside of hundreds of pages (were analysed)…It became clear that Pranab’s budget was clearly as sleight as his predecessors”. Gurumurthy even criticised a statement in Pranab Mukherjee’s budget speech which he said was “one-third true and two-third lie”. More damning was Gurumurthy’s comment that Mukherjee’s “mistake was that he was too keen to show that he had done a great job”. That, said Gurumurthy, “did him in”. As he put it: “Great expectations were created which the budget could not fulfil…He need not have ornamented this budget at all.”
Financial Times said fiscal discipline is not India’s forte and the budget did little to inspire. The paper said that Mukherjee was right in giving expanding the economy the top priority and the budget did take a stab at important obstacles to India’s economic well-being. But governance, it said, must improve “drastically”. The Asian Age complimented Mukherjee for doing a savvy job in walking the tightrope between keeping his government’s promise to the aam aadmi and the rural India while not neglecting other sections of society. In a way, it said, “He had something to offer everyone.” The Tribune said what Mukherjee presented is an aam aadmi budget and “a worthy blueprint for action”. “It marks,” said the paper, “a new thrust in welfare and rural upliftment”, adding: “Though it falls short of the expectations on incentives for growth, it could well be a good springboard for action in future.” Hindustan Times said: “Anticipation has been building up over the past five years and Mukherjee was seen as taking a strong pro-reform stance… The reforms are there but not in your face.” The Pioneer gave Mukherjee a pat on the back saying he has done “an excellent job of crafting a budget whose thrust is no doubt overly political”, even when noting that the budget “lacks an over-arching vision that addresses the nation’s aspirations”.
A Finance Minister may have unlimited power to craft a budget, but to survive he must also have a thick skin. Editors can be—and frequently are—very unsparing. It is a fact of life that at least some editors prefer to outsource an editorial rather than write one themselves. It takes a tremendous amount of scholarship, not to say memory of earlier budgets to write an edit, let alone a profound analytical article. The only consolation for all Finance Ministers is that budgets—even if they take weeks of hard work and cross-consultation to prepare—are forgotten earlier than one dares to think. Editors move on to the next crisis or calamity to focus attention of readers. “Even this shall pass away” is the guiding philosophy and who is anyone to challenge it?
