It only reaffirms that India has come of age - Indians are today silently but resolutely telling themselves: "we can manage our affairs"; "we no longer look at others - including Government to micromanage our lives and its affairs". It is now up to the leadership to not only take this newfound "confidence" forward but also use it as a platform to build a new India whose "atmospherics" permit every citizen to unravel his full potential.
Now coming to the budget per se, we, though the media acclaimed it as a budget that didn't tinkle with the ongoing economic growth process by doing any wrong, must admit that Shri. Chidambaram did work for creating right "atmospherics", at least on two fronts: One, he made an attempt to exhibit a sense of commitment to fiscal discipline, and two, kept his budget "compassionate" despite "severe fiscal constraints". Coming to his commitment to fiscal discipline, he projected a fiscal deficit of 3.8% as against 4.1% of GDP for the current year. This perhaps, augurs well for the nation to ultimately catch up with the targeted fiscal deficit of 3% by 2008-09. However, the projected revenue deficit of 2.1% as against the current 2.6% is not all that encouraging, though it must be admitted that it is on the right track. Looking at the research findings of Smt. Indira Rajaraman - RBI Chair Professor at NIPFP which reveal that the increment in fiscal and revenue deficits in pre-election years over the last 30 years were found to lie between 0.7- 0.9% of GDP, one cannot refrain from saying that the proposed reduction under revenue deficit sounds insufficient as in the remaining two years the Government has to achieve a reduction of more than 1% if the Government were to catch up with the FRBM Act by 2008-09 which incidentally happens to be the pre-election year. But, for the being it sounds encouraging particularly when we take note of the state elections that are in the offing.
The other significant element of the budget is the allocation of resources to certain key programs such as rural employment guarantee, rural health mission, rural roads, Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, etc.,that signifies a major effort towards bettering the lives of common man. Although the hitherto experiences with public expenditure under such programs is quite bitter, allowances must be granted, for the present administration is aiming at increasing the accountability and efficiency of the delivery channels by focusing more on "program approach" rather than project approach. There is yet another interesting provision in the budget. After all we cannot afford to forget that there are almost 700 million Indians living in 6,00,000 villages, for whom agriculture still continues to be the main stay of life. Despite all the technological advancement that today's India can gloat about, Indian agriculture is still dependent on the vagaries of monsoon. Besides irrigation, the other major constraint for Indian agriculture is timely availability of "credit", which even today continues to be a daunting task for every farmer. No civilized Indian could afford to ignore the fact of erratic behavior of monsoon coupled with the burden of credit inflicting insurmountable woes on farming community as reflected in the suicidal deaths of farmers from time to time.
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