Indian Austerity Service: Babus asked to tighten belts - Austerity in Administration
THE Government is feeling the heat and when the heat is more fiscal than political or judicial, it is for the Finance Minister to provide the coolant. Department of Expenditure has issued fresh guidelines on Expenditure Management. Obviously, the Expenditure Department is not to spend money, but to ensure that money is not spent - at least not spent unwisely. And they do this exercise every year.
Highlights of the new Guidelines:
- Additional expenditure over and above the prescribed approved ceiling for existing schemes will not be permitted.
- Every Ministry/Department is to effect a mandatory 10% cut in non-Plan expenditure.
- A 10% cut in the budgetary allocation for seminars and conferences has been imposed. The practice of holding meetings and conferences at five star hotels is to be discontinued.
- No purchase of vehicles except against condemnation.
- Domestic and Foreign Travel expenses - no First class and preferably have a video conference instead of travel. (The travel costs of senior babus are enormous. Just imagine an executive class ticket from Delhi to Chennai would cost about 45000 rupees while an ordinary class would cost 6000 rupees. Is there any justification for anyone to spend 40,000 rupees more for a two hour flight? And in these days of hi-tech communication facilities, what is the need for anyone to really travel?)
- No creation of new posts.
- Balanced Pace of Expenditure: Don't be frugal throughout the year and spend lavishly in March.
Will all these really help or rather who is going to follow this? More meetings will be held to discuss these matters and more money wasted on travel and paper! In any case, how much money is going to be saved in all these exercises?
But the Government should set an example in austerity in use of petro products. There was a time when even Supreme Court judges used to travel in pool cars. There is simply no logic in each officer using a separate car for coming to office and going home. You stand in front of any Chief Commissioner's office in the evening and you can see at least fifty cars leaving with just one passenger inside - right from Assistant Commissioner to Chief Commissioner, they all have individual cars, clogging the roads and wasting precious fuel. Why can't they share the cars? Be comfortable, but at least three officers can travel in one car. And every minister has a convoy of at least four vehicles.