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, it is for the Finance Minister to provide the coolant. Close on the heels of the PM's call for austerity and cut in foreign trips, the Finance Ministry, 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.
Highlights of the new Guidelines:
1. Additional expenditure over and above the prescribed approved ceiling for existing schemes will not be permitted and any amendment to a scheme is to be accompanied with matching savings.
2. every Ministry/Department is to effect a mandatory 10% cut in non-Plan expenditure under the heads
(a) Overtime Allowance (except in the case of industrial establishments where OTA is granted due to statutory obligations)
(b) Domestic and Foreign Travel expenses
(c) Publications
(d) Professional Services
(e) Advertising and Publicity
(f) Office expenses
(g) Petroleum –Oil-Lubricants ( POL )
(h) Other administrative expenses
3. The remaining portions of non-plan expenditure, excluding interest payment, repayment of debt, Defence capital, salaries, pension and the Finance Commission grants to the States, will be subjected to a mandatory 5% cut.
4. 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.
5. take advantage of the increasing competition in air travel schemes offering discounts to contain expenditure on air travel.
6. Observance of discipline in fiscal transfers to States, Public Sector Undertakings and Autonomous bodies at Centre, State and local levels and ensuring a balanced pace of expenditure.
To ensure effective monitoring of the implementation of the instructions, the Cabinet Secretary will hold a meeting with the Secretary of defaulting Ministry/Department every quarter.
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 wasting 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. State Chief Ministers usually have a convoy of more than a hundred cars following them when they go on tour. This is criminal waste of precious petrol. In the name of Security, there is no real logic in sanctioning a large convoy for our politicians – After all how many politicians are going to be blown up by terrorists? Our experience has been that the best of Security could not protect our leaders from mad terrorists; then why bother with so much expenditure and burning of petrol? Let there be a rule that nobody should have more than one escort vehicle, including the President and Prime Minister and all those Z class security VIPs. And let there be a rule that no VIP will be received at airports with more than one vehicle. We should try to have austerity in use of petrol, not in trying to have a 10% cut in expenditure. And why should the Government subsidise petrol? Even when the richest Indian buys petrol, he gets a gift of about twenty rupees per litre from the government!