Do it yourself

I had briefly mentioned about some lacunae in the intent expressed in the budget speech of the latest finance minister and elsewhere by the incumbent government, and the actual resource allocations made in the Union Budget 2020. ( see here ) A careful analysis of the budgetary allocation prompts three issues that need to be seriously contemplated, viz.— (1)    The need to correct misallocation of resources, which is primarily a consequence of the misplaced priorities of the governments in the past many decades. (2)    Lack of political intent to do fresh (zero based) thinking on the national priorities in the current socio-economic context. The changes in budgetary allocation are therefore incremental and less effective. The instances of resource wastage are frequent and unfortunate, given the scarcity of resources. (3)    Food subsidy continues to be the highest allocation in the budget despite decades of poverty alleviation ef...

The department wise allocations made in the budget make some noteworthy readings. Some of the key highlights could be noted as below: The department wise allocations are highly skewed. Out of the total 67 departments & ministries, the top 7 account for 75.4% of the total budgetary allocation. Next 21 departments are allocated 19.76% of total allocation and the rest 39 departments get a meager 4.84% of the total allocation. Food & Agriculture together account for 28.5% of the total budgetary allocation. Out of this 9% of total is allocated alone for the PM Kisan scheme. In FY20RE, 28% of the budget allocation to this item remained unspent. Despite the urgent need for raising agriculture productivity and government emphasis on this, the department of agriculture research and education is allocated a paltry 0.3% of the budget. Despite strong emphasis on the alternative medicine and promotion of traditional methods , the Ministry of Ayush is allocated a paltry ...