So Where's the Debate?

The Budget Session of Parliament has been on from February 22nd and will continue till May 7th , but with a little over a week left of the session, it begs the question – where has been the debate? Rather – what has Parliament been debating ?

Nearly every day these last few weeks, we hear about adjournments to Parliament due to disruptions by the opposition – from IPLgate to MP’s demanding suspension of Question Hour over the phone tapping issue. But while Parliament has been busy creating a ruckus over Shashi Tharoor, IPL, and the phone tapping scandal – some of the bigger questions affecting millions of people have remained unasked. Have we forgotten what the main functions of Parliament are?

In a recent article, MR Madhavan of PRS legislative research had pointed out that "Parliament’s main functions are legislative, oversight-related and representative; its mandate does not primarily include investigative work”. Parliament is an important forum where critical public debate can incur and elected representatives get an opportunity to ask the hard questions on behalf of the people they are accountable to and in turn get asked questions for which they in turn are accountable.

Yet a look at last year’s Budget Session gives a clear idea of the lack of adequate debate on the social sector - issues that affect millions of Indians on a day to day basis. Of the nearly 5400 questions asked during the session last year, only 5 percent of them were asked to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, 4 percent to the Ministry of Human Resource Development and a meager 2 percent to the Ministry of Rural Development. This is despite the fact that the government spent Rs 3,98,828 crores in 2008-09 on the social sector according to the revised estimates by the Economic Survey.



Even in terms of the type of questions asked some of the big issues remain unaddressed.

For example, while elementary education constitutes over 50 percent of total allocations for education, most of the questions last year pertained to higher and university education. Moreover, questions continue to be concentrated on access and coverage issues – enrolments, construction of new building etc, with quality education receiving a lesser priority. This is despite the fact that the ASER report released earlier this year had found that while 96% of children in rural India in the age group of 6-14 years are now enrolled in school, the quality of education is still quite poor. However, in the entire budget session last year, there were only 15 instances where questions related to teachers were asked – with 8 of those relating to recruitment and only 3 relating to quality including teacher trainings.

Similarly, while rural development particularly NREGA ( now MGNREGA) has been receiving a huge push in terms of money allocations – it received Rs. 36,750 crores in 2008-09 – up from Rs. 14,220 in 2007-08 – there were only 39 instances of questions relating to it.

In the backdrop of rising food prices and huge problems in effective targeting of ration cards ( from July 2000 till December 2009 – 53 lakh fake ration cards in West Bengal, 10 lakh in Andhra Pradesh and 7 lakh in Gujarat have been discovered and destroyed and there probably exists many that are yet to be discovered)- even the issue of Public Distribution System and Food Security got only 31 questions. Rural drinking water and sanitation, another major problem – received 16 questions. With numerous disruptions during the Session this year, this record may be worse.

As the Budget Session enters its last week let’s try and remember what the main functions of the Parliament are and leave the investigative work to the already existing bodies who have the required skills and expertise such as the CBI, CID’s, Enforcement Directorates etc, and start asking some of these questions.

Avani Kapur is Researcher and Coordinator, PAISA Project at the Accountability Initiative

AI Budget Briefs Series 2010

The Accountability Initiative, Centre for Policy Research is pleased to launch its Budget Briefs Series 2010. The 8 briefs in this series examine trends in social sector allocations and expenditures in the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, Mid-day Meal Scheme, National Rural Health Mission, Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, Water and Sanitation, Food Subsidy, Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission and the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojna.

AI Budget Series: Rural Sanitation and Drinking Water

In the last of a 4 - part series on social sector spending in India, the Accountability Initiative in collaboration with Live Mint, looks at expenditure on rural drinking water and sanitation . For a ready reckoner (image) click here. For a detailed analysis see the article -Rural Sanitation and Drinking Water:Mere Infrastructure Won't Solve Problems

AI Budget Series: Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS)

In the first of a 4 - part series on social sector spending in India, the Accountability Initiative in collaboration with Live Mint, looks at expenditure under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MNREGS). For a ready reckoner (image) click here. For a detailed analysis see the article - Rural Economics: How taxpayers' money is (or isn't) being spent.

Food Subsidy and the Budget: Where did your money go?

Is the food subsidy helping the poor in India? How much money has been allocated, how much is being spent? and are these allocations efficient? Accountability Initiative's data on food subsidy shows where your money is going.



Hindol Sengupta, Bloomberg UTV news discusses food subsidy and the budget with with Dr Swaminathan and others on "Everybody's Business: Where Did Your Money Go?".

Budget 2010 - Great Expectations

Anit Mukherjee

It is the Budget season again. Every year, the nation looks forward to the two-hour speech of the Finance Minister where he lays out the government’s housekeeping statement – revenues collected, expenditures incurred and the plan for the next year. The budget means different things to different people. Some focus on the tax rates on income, goods and services, while others look at how much the government is spending and on what. But the bigger question is: what does the budget signify for the nation?

Every budget has a context and a theme. Budget 2009 was in the backdrop of the financial crisis, the general elections and the post-election policy direction. The theme was crisis-management - how to pull the economy out of the downturn trumped the concerns over the fiscal deficit which was pegged at 6.8 percent of GDP, the highest since 2003-04. The bold decisions were put off until later.

It is in this backdrop that Budget 2010 will be presented. The economy has come out of the downturn pretty much unscathed compared to other countries in the developed world. So the theme this year would be about reigning in the deficit, rationalizing expenditure and focusing on priority sectors. This is exactly what any family would do after a year of profligacy to get its finances in order.

So what can we expect from the Finance Minister this year? First of all, it would be a difficult balancing act – the need to raise more resources through higher taxes vis-à-vis derailing the growth rebound. The second is to ensure sustained and increased financing for core sectors – education, health, rural and urban infrastructure. Third, the budget needs to take into account the recommendations of the Thirteenth Finance Commission which will be tabled in this session of the Parliament.

The most significant talking point may be the allocation for education. The operationalization of the Right to Education (RTE) means that substantially more allocation would be needed in the Centre’s budget. At the same time, the Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan (RMSA) would pick up steam, and allocation for higher education will continue to increase. On the other hand, this budget is expected to maintain the status quo on NRHM, NREGS and Bharat Nirman.

There is one thing that certainly this budget would not do – talk about how to improve the efficiency and accountability of expenditure. Everyone in government loves to spend, nobody likes to be asked “What exactly did you do with the money”? The great expectations of transparency, accountability and independent monitoring outlined in the President’s address last year seems to have been conveniently forgotten, and the government seems to spend the people’s money as it likes. This needs to change – the sooner, the better.

Anit Mukherjee is with the National Institute of Public Finance Policy (NIPFP).

Show Me the Money – The trials and tribulations of finding budgetary data in India

Avani Kapur


Every year on budget day, millions across the country tune into their television or radio-sets to hear the verdict of the budget. We want to know how much money has been allocated for various schemes and how the government has been fairing on its promises during the previous years. Yet, apart from that one day where basic budgetary data is clearly spelt out for us in a language everyone can understand, for the most part, anyone who has tried getting budgetary data on the social sector knows the arduous task it entails. A quick look at the Ministry of Health Website gives a clear indication of this!

As part of my work at the Accountability Initiative, I have been involved in trying to collect and disseminate information on social sector expenditures (see here). The importance of understanding social sector budgetary data becomes relevant by the quantum of money that it involves. The fact that the Indian economy has been growing at an incredible rate is a well-known fact. And this has been accompanied with large increases in social sector spending. According to the Economic Survey of India, Rs. 2,39,340 crores was spent in 2006-07 (the latest year for which actual expenditure figures are available) on Social Services including health and education. But how much of this actually reaches the service provider?

For the most part, tracking expenditure through budget documents requires an understanding of the expenditure responsibilities within and across Central and State governments. Budgets usually involve codes and although since 1987 budget codes have been harmonized, the process and documentation of budget-making has not kept pace with the changes over the last two decades.

Broadly there are 4 places to look for budgetary data, but each comes with its own set of limitations. One of the first places to look for budget documents is the Central Government’s dedicated budget website- www.indiabudget.nic.in. However, while the detailed demand for grants provides the Revised Estimates (RE) and Budget Estimates (BE), the final accounted expenditure is not available. Second, there is the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), which gives information about the amount of money allocated under different sectors and states, but here too, there is no detailed information on how, and on what, the money is being spent.

In order to get details about expenditure one needs to go to a separate document called the ‘Finance Accounts’, which is not easily available online. Moreover, there is a 2 year lag in reporting, i.e. for 2008-09 financial year, actual expenditure is available only up to 2006-07.

Similarly, while budget documents of the State governments and relevant government ministries do provide actual expenditure, they are not always publically available online and even when they are, they are not easy to navigate as there is no standardization in the presentation of budget documents across states or departments along with the time-lag problem already mentioned.

Apart from the difficulty in finding information, even if the information is available, there are problems of different reporting styles, lack of reliable and up-to-date information.

To take the example of education, while the RBI reports it under the budget head of ‘’Education, Sports, Art and Culture’’, the Central Government budget website puts education under the head of General, Elementary, Secondary and Adult Education. This makes it difficult to know which is the right source and the data naturally doesn’t match, making cross-verification difficult.

Moreover, for social sectors such as education, there may be multiple departments delivering the service. For example, in Madhya Pradesh and Chattisgarh, schools in tribal-dominated blocks come under the domain of the Tribal Welfare Department. This means that the total expenditure for education is generally higher than the expenditure incurred by the Department of Education.

The problem is further intensified in cases where fiscal responsibility is devolved to the lower levels of government. Significant portion of grants coming from the Centre go directly to the panchayats through the State budget. While the State budget documents mention the quantum of block grants to panchayats made by various departments, they often do not mention the purpose of the grants. Moreover, the lack of documentation by the Panchayats along the lines of a national system of accounts makes reconciling the grants coming from the Centre and the State, with panchayat records, virtually impossible.

The lack of regular and reliable data is evident from the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan Web Portal wherein, till date, expenditure under the various heads is only available up till January 2009. There is also no way of knowing when the website would be updated .

In the absence of a centralised information database tracking, the allocation and expenditure of funds (even for the government) becomes an extremely tedious exercise, having implications for planning as well as efficiency. The (often) big difference in revised estimates and budget estimates indicates that there are problems in the planning process, often caused by the inability to incorporate the spillovers of unspent funds. According to estimates, more than Rs.50,000 crores that were committed to flagship programs such as Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, National Rural Health Mission etc, in previous years, are lying unutilized.

A centralised information system would assist in mitigating this problem by catching mistakes and inefficiencies and also ensuring transparency.

With the advent of the Right to Information Act (RTI), we now have a legal duty to provide information including budgetary information. Section 4(2) of the RTI, calls for the proactive disclosure of information of public authorities and mandates, “it shall be the constant endeavour of every public authority….. to provide as much information suo moto to the public at regular intervals through various means of communication including the internet, so that the public have minimum resort to the use of this act to obtain information”. Websites such as the Andhra Pradesh Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (APREGS) website, with its well-organised and up-to-date information for various heads right up to the mandal level indicate that creating such a system is possible. Now it is time we step up to the challenge!

Avani Kapur is Researcher and Coordinator of PAISA project at Accountability Initiative