Gujarat budget mismatch: While tax revenues suggest rise, spending on people's welfare decelerates

% of actuals to budget estimates

By Jag Jivan
Facts made available from Gujarat’s finance department show deceleration in spending during the first six months of the current financial year, between April and September 2014. A financial statement, accessed by Counterview, suggests that, while there had been acceleration in revenue collection, this has failed to improve the ability to spend on different projects floated by the Gujarat government for people’s “welfare”. Characterized as “unaudited” accounts, the figures show that, though the tax revenue of the Gujarat government rose from 45.7 per cent of the budget estimates during April-September 2013 to 47 per cent in April-September 2014, this did not impact the ability to raise spending.
The budget estimate for the current financial year, 2014-15, was set at 1,25,285.98 crore, and spending for the first six months of the financial year, if the official report is any indication, was Rs 42,735.02 crore, which is 34.1 per cent of the total . The statement says, as against this, the spending in the corresponding period – first six months of the fiscal 2013-14 – was 38 per cent of the total budget estimate. This suggests that spending this year was four per cent lower than last year.
What is even more interesting is that, while there has not been much of deceleration in the spending for the non-plan sector – which mainly consist of salaries, debt repayment, repayment on interest on principal amount, and other “necessary” expenditure, which the government must incur in order to run the government – as for the plan sector, there was considerable deceleration. The non-plan figure for April-September 2014 was Rs 25,237.41 crore, or 40.8 per cent of the total budget estimates as against 42.5 per cent during the corresponding period last year.
However, as for the planned expenditure, which consists of social sector projects for health, education, social justice and empowerment, water resources, electricity and other infrastructure facilities to the people, the Gujarat government could spend just 27.6 per cent of the total budgeted amount between April and September 2014 – Rs 17,497.61 crore out of 63,475.64 crore budgeted. This is against the actual spending of 32.5 per cent against the budget estimates during the corresponding period last year. This suggests that this year, till September, Gujarat government failed to spend five per cent less amount that what it had estimated compared to last year.
From available indications, the failure to spend collected funds may have happened because of poor budget-making by the Gujarat government. This was noticed by India’s Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) in its report, placed in the Gujarat state assembly in 2012, which said that the state government’s budgetary allocations were “unrealistic and lacked credibility”, and the deficiencies in financial management included “poor budgeting and expenditure control.” Giving the example of the state revenue department, it said, its expenditures in 2007-08, 2008-09 and 2009-10 were sharply lower than the budgetary provisions.
CAG noted that the expenditure should be “uniformly spread” throughout the year and rush of expenditure during the last quarter and particularly the last month should be avoided. However, scrutiny of records revealed that there were cases of 20 per cent to 100 per cent expenditure being incurred in the last quarter of the year. It also found that allotted amount for specific schemes remained unutilized, and hence “parked”, in the so-called personal ledger accounts of District Development Officers (DDOs).
For instance, CAG said, the state government “failed to distribute” land among beneficiaries under the Gujarat Land Ceiling Act. Then, there were a “huge delay: in providing services to people by e-dhara centres, the IT enable service to land holders. There was also failure to utilize Central funds for updating and modernizing of land records. This indicated inadequacies in preparation of project proposals, slow progress of work as well as inadequate departmental monitoring and supervision, it underlined.

Comments

Plastic burning in homes threatens food, water and air across Global South: Study

By Jag Jivan In a groundbreaking study spanning 26 countries across the Global South , researchers have uncovered the widespread and concerning practice of households burning plastic waste as a fuel for cooking, heating, and other domestic needs. The research, published in Nature Communications , reveals that this hazardous method of managing both waste and energy poverty is driven by systemic failures in municipal services and the unaffordability of clean alternatives, posing severe risks to human health and the environment.

Economic superpower’s social failure? Inequality, malnutrition and crisis of India's democracy

By Vikas Meshram India may be celebrated as one of the world’s fastest-growing economies, but a closer look at who benefits from that growth tells a starkly different story. The recently released World Inequality Report 2026 lays bare a country sharply divided by wealth, privilege and power. According to the report, nearly 65 percent of India’s total wealth is owned by the richest 10 percent of its population, while the bottom half of the country controls barely 6.4 percent. The top one percent—around 14 million people—holds more than 40 percent, the highest concentration since 1961. Meanwhile, the female labour force participation rate is a dismal 15.7 percent.

The greatest threat to our food system: The aggressive push for GM crops

By Bharat Dogra Thanks to the courageous resistance of several leading scientists who continue to speak the truth despite increasing pressures from the powerful GM crop and GM food lobby , the many-sided and in some contexts irreversible environmental and health impacts of GM foods and crops, as well as the highly disruptive effects of this technology on farmers, are widely known today.

Swami Vivekananda's views on caste and sexuality were 'painfully' regressive

By Bhaskar Sur* Swami Vivekananda now belongs more to the modern Hindu mythology than reality. It makes a daunting job to discover the real human being who knew unemployment, humiliation of losing a teaching job for 'incompetence', longed in vain for the bliss of a happy conjugal life only to suffer the consequent frustration.

UP tribal woman human rights defender Sokalo released on bail

By A Representative After almost five months in jail, Adivasi human rights defender and forest worker Sokalo Gond has been finally released on bail.Despite being granted bail on October 4, technical and procedural issues kept Sokalo behind bars until November 1. The Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP) and the All India Union of Forest Working People (AIUFWP), which are backing Sokalo, called it a "major victory." Sokalo's release follows the earlier releases of Kismatiya and Sukhdev Gond in September. "All three forest workers and human rights defenders were illegally incarcerated under false charges, in what is the State's way of punishing those who are active in their fight for the proper implementation of the Forest Rights Act (2006)", said a CJP statement.

Urgent need to study cause of large number of natural deaths in Gulf countries

By Venkatesh Nayak* According to data tabled in Parliament in April 2018, there are 87.76 lakh (8.77 million) Indians in six Gulf countries, namely Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). While replying to an Unstarred Question (#6091) raised in the Lok Sabha, the Union Minister of State for External Affairs said, during the first half of this financial year alone (between April-September 2018), blue-collared Indian workers in these countries had remitted USD 33.47 Billion back home. Not much is known about the human cost of such earnings which swell up the country’s forex reserves quietly. My recent RTI intervention and research of proceedings in Parliament has revealed that between 2012 and mid-2018 more than 24,570 Indian Workers died in these Gulf countries. This works out to an average of more than 10 deaths per day. For every US$ 1 Billion they remitted to India during the same period there were at least 117 deaths of Indian Workers in Gulf ...

Jayanthi Natarajan "never stood by tribals' rights" in MNC Vedanta's move to mine Niyamigiri Hills in Odisha

By A Representative The Odisha Chapter of the Campaign for Survival and Dignity (CSD), which played a vital role in the struggle for the enactment of historic Forest Rights Act, 2006 has blamed former Union environment minister Jaynaynthi Natarjan for failing to play any vital role to defend the tribals' rights in the forest areas during her tenure under the former UPA government. Countering her recent statement that she rejected environmental clearance to Vendanta, the top UK-based NMC, despite tremendous pressure from her colleagues in Cabinet and huge criticism from industry, and the claim that her decision was “upheld by the Supreme Court”, the CSD said this is simply not true, and actually she "disrespected" FRA.

Stands 'exposed': Cavalier attitude towards rushed construction of Char Dham project

By Bharat Dogra* The nation heaved a big sigh of relief when the 41 workers trapped in the under-construction Silkyara-Barkot tunnel (Uttarkashi district of Uttarakhand) were finally rescued on November 28 after a 17-day rescue effort. All those involved in the rescue effort deserve a big thanks of the entire country. The government deserves appreciation for providing all-round support.

'Restructuring' Sahitya Akademi: Is the ‘Gujarat model’ reaching Delhi?

By Prakash N. Shah* A fortnight and a few days have slipped past that grim event. It was as if the wedding preparations were complete and the groom’s face was about to be unveiled behind the ceremonial tinsel. At 3 PM on December 18, a press conference was poised to announce the Sahitya Akademi Awards .

Search This Blog