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Ashok Dasgupta

NEW DELHI, March 6

BELIEVE it or not, such is the art of jugglery with figures in the annual arithmetic called the Budget that the essential difference between a good budgetary exercise and a bad one - as perceived by corporates and the people at large - is, at best, paper-thin.

I say paper-thin because it is the allocation of a paisa here or a paisa there - out of each rupee spent by the Government - that appears to make all the difference.

This particularly holds true of the maiden Budget presented by the Finance Minister, Mr Jaswant Singh, for the year 2003-04 when compared to the one presented for the current fiscal by the then Finance Minister, Mr Yashwant Sinha, last year.

While at first glance Mr Singh's maiden Budget has been hailed as "good to excellent" by one and all, the last Budget by his predecessor was viewed, dubbed and dumped as a "nightmare".

So much so that senior local BJP members were quick to immediately put the burden of defeat in the Delhi polls last year on the so-called "nightmarish" provisions of Mr Sinha's Budget.

What, then, has been the basic difference that bouquets are being showered this year while it was brickbats last year? A comparison of Mr Singh's Budget with that of Mr Sinha's in terms of how the Government manages to garner a rupee and how that rupee is spent reveals that the variation is largely insignificant.

For instance, a comparison of how a rupee is being mopped up in the two years shows that for the new fiscal, non-tax revenue has declined by a single paisa to 14 paise as compared to 15 paise mopped up in 2002-03.

And that is the reason why borrowings and other liabilities stand increased by one paisa to 30 paise as compared to 29 paise earlier.

As for the other avenues which go into the making of a rupee, the mop-up remains identical under the various heads, namely, 10 paise from corporation tax, nine paise from income-tax, 10 paise from customs duties, 19 paise from excise, two paise from other taxes and six paise from non-debt capital receipts.

Coming to how the rupee is spent by the Government, a comparison reveals that allocation to the Central Plan remains the same at 14 paise in both the years while the States' share of taxes and duties also is identical at 13 paise.

Similarly, the State and Union Territory Plan assistance is pegged identically at 10 paise, the non-Plan assistance to State and UT Governments is at four paise while other non-Plan expenditure is also the same at 12 paise.

The only difference is that the expenditure by way of subsidies in the new fiscal is up by two paise to 10 paise as compared to eight paise earmarked in 2002-03.

This has been possible by a reduction of one paisa each in interest payments to 24 paise and defence allocation at 13 paise as compared to 25 paise and 14 paise allocated under the two heads, respectively.

Thus, apart from selective lowering of excise and customs duties for various sectors of the industry - although the net mop-up under the two heads remain the same - it is the higher subsidies in the new fiscal, which has gone down well with the people. At least, at first glance.

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