The budget process is covered by live TV and extensively by most newspapers each year. Most large companies have their own analysis of the budget. Increasingly, there is an effort by civil society groups to analyse the budget to decipher the allocations to the social sector. All of this is hugely important and indeed necessary for greater scrutiny and analysis by citizens across the country.
But we at PRS have often spoken about the role of Parliament in effectively scrutinising the government. If there is anything that the Parliament must scrutinise carefully each year, it is the budget – because this is the way in which the government expresses its real priorities. Even if the Parliament passes Bills on any subject – right to education, right to health, right to food, etc. – a good measure of the true willingness of the government to implement any of this can be seen by how much money it is willing to allocate to make things a reality.
Former Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha spoke about the budget process (Times of India, Feb 27th) and has argued that the current process in India is archaic and is in urgent need of an overhaul. He also points that Parliament has little power to change anything in the budget, and argues that this undermines the principles of our Parliamentary democracy. We agree.
On our part, we have produced two documents to help readers understand the budget process better. How to read the union budget and the Union Budget process can both be accessed from our website. And we would greatly appreciate your comments on this and other posts on our blog.
Over the next few weeks, Assembly elections are scheduled to be held in five States – Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Uttarakhand, Manipur and Goa. As parties prepare for the upcoming elections, we take a look at the electoral trends in these states over the past 25 years. We see that electoral fortunes in some states have fluctuated widely. The electoral mandate in UP has varied over the last 25 years. Five different parties -- Congress, Janata Dal, BJP, SP and BSP have been the single largest party in the Assembly at some point in time. In Punjab, the Akalis and the Congress have alternately controlled the government. In Uttarakhand, the 2007 elections saw the BJP take over control from the Congress. In Manipur and Goa, Congress has been dominant player in elections. In both states, it emerged as the single largest party in all but one election since 1984. In Manipur, the Congress lost this status to the Manipur State Congress Party (MSCP), a splinter group of the Congress in 2000. In Goa, it lost this status to BJP in 2002. The results of Uttar Pradesh elections will have the highest impact on national politics. The state has 80 out of 543 elected seats in Lok Sabha and 31 out of 231 elected seats in Rajya Sabha. The results could give an indication of the prospects for these parties in the next general elections, and may also change the composition of Rajya Sabha over the next few years. Given that there are five parties (BSP, SP, BJP, Congress and RLD) with a significant base in the state, the possibilities of post poll arrangements are also wide open. For more details, see our Vital Stats.
