PC's budget cuts draw fire from colleagues in govt

Finance minister P Chidambaram's intent to walk the talk on fiscal discipline and nurse the government's delicate balance sheet back into health appears to have run into stiff resistance from ministerial colleagues. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Feb 21, 2013, 11:57:33 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Finance minister P Chidambaram's intent to walk the talk on fiscal discipline and nurse the government's delicate balance sheet back into health by controlling expenses appears to have run into stiff resistance from ministerial colleagues, who fear it would leave lesser resources to fund flagship welfare schemes.

Sources told HT that finance ministry wants the gross budgetary support (GBS) for 2013-14 to be limited to a level that many ministries fear will significantly shave off funds allotted to them, compared to last year.

The central plan is funded almost equally from government's own accounts or the annual budget and the resources that flow in from public enterprises.

The government's support to the central plan is called the gross budgetary support, or the GBS.

For 2012-13, the GBS was originally set at R5,21,000 crore, which was later slashed by 20% or to around Rs.4,16,000 crore.

Sources said that Chidambaram wants the GBS to be raised by only 15% of the revised estimates-a move some of his colleagues feel will upset social sector schemes leading up to an election year.

Tribal affairs minister Kishore Chandra Deo, rural development minister Jairam Ramesh and defence minister AK Antony are some of the ministries who have objected to the proposed cut in allocations.

"The plan size could not be finalised as what finance ministry is offering is not acceptable to the ministries," a planning commission functionary said, after a meeting at the PMO failed to hammer out an agreeable fund allocation model.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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