Yashwant Sinha's budget speech has by all accounts been well received and can even claim some firsts to its credit. Unfortunately, though, not all of the really good parts of the budget and Sinha's speech have been fully appreciated. We think it is only fair that the true brilliance of the effort be brought to public attention. So here goes.
For sheer chutzpah, this sentence from Sinha's speech would take some beating: "The economy remained secure with record levels of foreign exchange reserves and public food stocks." So where's the chutzpah? Remember that anybody who has anything to do with the issue - government, parliament, economists, the Expenditure Reforms Commission - has spent the last year expressing concern at the size of the buffer stocks with the FCI. They are already at 45 million tonnes and rising. A parliamentary committee had even toyed with the idea of dumping some stocks at sea to make storage space for the next crop! Given this background, surely claiming the record stocks as an achievement takes some gumption.
Or sample this: Sinha at one stage announced solemnly that: "In the light of new competition in the banking industry it is necessary to strengthen the management of the public sector banks. I propose to provide greater autonomy to bank managements." Never mind the fact that a few minutes earlier he had with gay abandon been declaring targets for the banks in terms of kisan credit cards and the details of insurance cover he was "asking" the banks to provide.
The finance minister's audacity didn't end there. Speaking on the need to accelerate the development of roads, he declared that, "the key the to government's success in accelerating the road development programme lies in its bold policy of levying a cess on petrol and diesel as a user charge for road usage". He perhaps forgot to add that the key to his success in controlling expenditure over the last few years lay in his even bolder policy of delaying the usage of the amount collected from the cess for over two years by the simple device of omitting to set up the Central Road Fund.
Believe it or not Sinha also was brave enough to take on the VHP and its ilk. He has suggested "a new scheme for women in difficult circumstances like widows of Vrindavan, Kashi and other places, destitute women and other disadvantaged women groups". Isn't this the language of Deepa Mehta, that heretic? Is our very own Sinha really suggesting that the widows of Vrindavan and Kashi live in "difficult circumstances"?
But, we suppose, this kind of exemplary courage in the line of duty was too good to last. It had to give somewhere. It did, when it came to the bureaucracy. Having dramatically announced that the "Facility of LTC to Central Government employees will be suspended for 2 years for the remaining part of the four-year block period", he was quick to add that there were exceptions, namely "employees who are entitled to last LTC before retirement." Why do we find it difficult to believe that the exceptions were decided by the profile of the highest in the land - the secretaries to the government - among whom surely there must be more than a few who would qualify?
Bravery is not the only thing for which the minister must be commended. He has also shown that he empathises with the poorest of the poor like few of his predecessors did. To begin with, how many other FMs can claim what he has: "I have personally experienced poverty and faced problems in pursuing higher studies." ? Little wonder then that he has announced a scheme for educational loans that is truly generous. You can get upto Rs 15 lakh to study abroad and upto Rs 7.5 lakh to study in India. What is more, upto Rs 4 lakh there is no need to provide a collateral and the interest will be equal to the prime lending rate (PLR), the lowest rate at which any bank lends. Even above Rs 4 lakh, the interest rate cannot be more than one per cent above the PLR. There are generous grace periods for repayment too. And yet, the tragedy of this much misunderstood messiah of the poor is that bureaucrats, politicians and others of that sort are apparently overjoyed at this scheme, while the poor, whom he is so touchingly trying to help, are looking bemused.
The same fate seems to have befallen some other schemes he has introduced. For instance, Sinha has announced generous sops for farmers setting up godowns. In his own words, "this scheme will enable small farmers to enhance their holding capacity in order to sell their produce at remunerative prices". Now, we all know that in India it is the small farmer who has huge amounts of grain that, if he could only hoard it, would give him a killing when prices rise. Yet, strangely enough, the small farmer is learnt to be inexplicably cold to this generous offer.
Nor are landless agricultural labourers rejoicing as they should be. The minister has announced a special scheme for them, under which they are entitled to a pension of Rs 100 per month beyond the age of 60. These ungrateful wretches are apparently arguing that very few of them actually live beyond that age! How finicky can they get? Believe it or not they are even carping at the scheme for those below the poverty line which provides an education allowance of Rs 100 per month to their children of to meet the expenses of education during their studies from 9th to 12th standard. Their silly complaint: Their children can't last long enough in schools to get to the 9th.
TV game show organisers are an equally ungrateful lot. Here was Sinha trying to make their contestants' lives easier by deducting tax from their winnings at source. But the organisers are apparently cribbing that "Kaun Banega Sattar Lakh Pati" doesn't have quite the same ring as Kaun Banega Crorepati.
But surely the unkindest cut of them all came in response to a simple slip of the tongue. When Sinha was reading out his proposal to tax "income by way of commission or brokerage exceeding Rs 2,500", at source, he inadvertently read out the figure as Rs 2,500 crore. Can happen to any of us can't it. But some die hard cynics have a different take on it. The slip, they insist, was Freudian. A minister, they maintain, cannot comprehend "income by way of commission" being in anything less than crores.
Rarely has there been a better budget, or a more misunderstood author of the budget.

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