Commentary/Ashok Mitra

Saving the Budget was thought to be such a national
necessity that short-circuiting the Constitution was
regarded as no sin

It should not happen that way, but it does. Every now and then a footnote assumes a significance, the passage it is tagged on to does not.

So it was in Parliament last week.

For a few hours, the central focus of last week's goings-on in New Delhi was shifted from speculation about the government's survival to a much more mundane theme -- getting the 1996-97 Budget proposals through. During those brief hours, it was the Budget, that February 28 affair, with all its bonanza to the rich, that mattered most. The rest of the tribulations the nation faced were all dross.

A proposal to convene a special Lok Sabha session before the motion of confidence was to be moved was sponsored. During this two-day session, the Finance Bill would-be approved with acclamation -- and the tycoons would have their kingdom come.

Those who authored the proposal betray a frightening lack of constitutional literacy. Approval of a government's Budget is indistinguishable from an expression of confidence in the government itself. Therefore, if the Budget receives the nod in Lok Sabha, it would be quite legitimate for the United Front government to claim that the confidence vote was no longer necessary; that the passage of the Budget was positive proof it enjoyed the confidence of the House.

But then, those obsessed by their own class interests tend to shed common sense. The tycoons and stock-brokers had a sudden gleam in their eye; their representatives made a beeline for the Speaker's chamber; the fable was spread that the Finance Bill, once formally presented, becomes the House's property, and could be passed irrespective of whether the government which sponsored it survived or not.

Saving the Budget was thought to be such an overriding national necessity that short-circuiting democratic conventions enshrined in the Constitution was regarded as no sin. The most frightening part is even the incumbent finance minister acted as a propagandist for this.

Parliament has a certain rota of procedures for examining Budget proposals. The general discussion on the Budget is followed by a vote-on-account sanctioning expenditure for a specific period, so that government activities do not come to a standstill until the full demands for grants are voted and the Finance Bill put into the statute book.

After this, the departmental standing committees come into the picture. They examine the departmental demands for grants as well as the details of the proposals embedded in the Finance Bill. Seventeen such committees cover the entire spectrum of governmental activities. The discussions spill over a number of weeks, culminating in formal reports with comments and recommendations on the functioning of the ministries and their demands for grants incorporated, which are finally presented to both Houses.

True, much of the standing committees's work is done in a hurry; but still, the scrutiny the committees's undertake is an integral part of the prerogative Parliament enjoys. The reports prove useful at the time of detailed discussions in both Houses on the demands for grants of individuals ministries.

The many imperfections in their working notwithstanding, the committees do go into the details of fiscal and budgetary proposals. This protects Parliament from being taken for granted; and guarantees that the people's concerns in a democratic polity is not given the short shrift.

Our industrialists and businessmen, narcissists par excellence, have evidently the lowest possible opinion of Parliamentarians. They may be right or they may be wrong in this judgement of theirs. The reality nonetheless remains -- these Parliamentarians have the popular mandate, which the tycoons do not have. And that makes a great deal of difference in a democratic society.

Moreover, some of these tycoons, or their predecessors, perhaps owed a debt of gratitude in the past to these politicians, or their predecessors, for occasional gifts and privileges during the long decades of economic control. They may, for all one can surmise, continue to hold individual politicians in esteem and regard. Their grouse is only against what they consider to be silly constitutional arrangements which stand in the way of the automatic implementation of things they need.

The finance minister's Budget proposals were so nice, why must democratic procedures and conventions stand in the way of these coming into instant operational validity -- an occurrence which would have immensely pleased foreign investors as well?

Coming to the brasstacks, this species of representatives from the business and industrial world betrays an authoritarian mind. They press for liberalisation, but not for the democracy which free market philosophers hold aloft. They have emerged as major proponents of the opaque point of view that, for economic development to proceed apace, a political apparatus which works faster and more efficiently than the lugubrious Parliamentary democratic system we currently have must evolve.

It is, in their view, unpardonable that the finance minister's magnificent Budget had to be stymied by the incomprehensible political games indulged in New Delhi.

Some of these zealots have begun to quote Deng and refer to the strides China is making on what they assume to be an extraordinarily exuberant flow of foreign investments. As much as 90 to 95 per cent of the so-called inflow of foreign funds into China is, however, made up of resources contributed by groups and individuals of Chinese extraction living overseas, or by remittances flowing out of China that are immediately returned.

Our tycoons miss another important point -- that China's attractiveness to foreign investors is solely based on the datum of a 120 billion populace experiencing an uninterrupted 10 per cent or more annual national income growth for over a decade. This order of growth, which is more evenly spread than in India, provides a burgeoning market for consumer goods.

China reached where it has because of the rigour and discipline of the social systems in the initial phase of the popular democratic revolution. We in India chose not to enforce such a discipline on ourselves. And now, at the end of 50 years of Independence, a few amongst us have begun to talk grumpily of the nuisance political democracy is. Perhaps these tycoons extolling the virtues of the Chinese system do not read newspapers. Political and economic corruption entails the death penalty in China, and hundreds of executions take place each year.

Are these gentlemen ready for such a denouement, either for themselves or for their political patrons?

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