Financial indiscipline led to crisis: Gulati

By P. Venugopal

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM, MAY 15. Dr. I.S. Gulati, who is bidding adieu to the State Planning Board, feels that the problem of mounting Governmental debt could be tackled in the State only if the ruling politicians are more discreet.

``Budgetary management requires a lot of discipline. It gives me no pleasure to admit that this has been absent during the term of the outgoing Government,'' he said in an interview to The Hindu today.

``I am not saying that the previous Governments were an exception. Expert committees appointed during the time of the previous UDF Government had also pointed to this failing. The simple rule is that, when you prepare a budget, you have to adhere to its provisions,'' he added.

Dr. Gulati said that the tendency on the part of some of the departments to go ahead with projects which were not provided for in the budget had imposed enormous pressure on the State's finances. ``You allot, say, Rs. 100 crores for a particular department and then go ahead with programmes requiring Rs. 500 crores or more, without the knowledge or consent of the Planning Board,'' he said.

He said the Public Works Department had been exceeding its budgetary provisions several fold. ``The bureaucrats tell the concerned Minister such and such projects could be executed. The matter is then placed before the Cabinet and a decision is taken, without considering whether the funds are really there.''

Another case in point had been the introduction of the Plus Two system in education. ``When the matter was first discussed, the understanding was that teachers who are in excess in the schools would be redeployed to the Plus Two. But it did not happen that way. The amount that has to be set apart to give salaries to the Plus Two teachers is mindboggling,'' he said.

``I have a feeling that the Finance Minister, Mr. T. Sivadasa Menon, had not been as assertive as he should have been. He should have put his foot down when one or the other Minister came up with programmes which were beyond the means of the Government,'' he said.

He said it was also not an ideal thing to allow individual departments to set up special vehicles like the Industrial Revitalisation Fund to mobilise funds from the market. ``Whichever way you look at it, such measures would only add up to the Government debt. We even got a rap from the Union Finance Ministry and the Planning Commission for resorting to such tactics,'' he said.

Dr. Gulati said there was another problem with allowing individual departments to launch their own special vehicles for resource mobilisation. If the departments proceeded along their own paths, there would be no mechanism to check whether matters were getting out of hand.

The tendency on the part of the Ministers to place before the Cabinet programmes which were not budgeted for and get them approved should change. This was a wrong procedure and extremely dangerous, Dr. Gulati said.

He said that, in spite of all these, the people should give credit to the LDF Government for its performance in the area of development. The Plan decentralisation process had come to stay and the UDF Government could not turn the clock back. ``In fact, the UDF's commitment to strengthen decentralisation is in its election manifesto,'' he said.

``I am convinced that Kerala is marching ahead. It is strange that the people here doubt whether they are doing well. The economic indicators now place Kerala in the seventh place among the Indian States in the matter of prosperity. In fact, the State has registered good growth during the last five years. It is the fastest growing State in South India at present,'' he said.

``Perhaps the expectations are very high here. There is certainly nothing wrong in that. We are capable of much more,'' Dr. Gulati said.

``It is also an unpleasant fact that the State is not getting its due from the Centre. Whenever the LDF gives voice to this genuine grievance, the other sections seem to take it as a mere ploy to divert the blame. I can give you several instances of Central discrimination to our little State, backed by solid statistics,'' Dr. Gulati said.

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