You may have noticed a lot of clamour all around about the upcoming 2020 Union Budget of India and most of it is about numbers – who deserves what, what tax rates should be kept, whether the government will be willing to forego tax revenues any further, especially after recent cuts in the corporate tax rates, etc. One may get a plethora of articles/writeups on the same, I thought to give it a different flavour.
The current government has reached out to the citizens of India multiple times, with emotional appeals to forego the LPG subsidy, IRCTC concessions, etc. On the contrary, how about we, the citizens appeal to the government to adopt austerity measures and spend the hard-earned money of the taxpayers in a more transparent manner and be accountable about it?
After all, a penny saved is a penny earned. And this in turn will also help in bringing down the fiscal deficit of the country.
Although, this could be done in a variety of ways. However, to start with, they could consider reducing the number of (not so necessary) foreign trips made during the year, foregoing the numerous perks the public servants receive in form of subsidies/allowances, or for that matter, even irrational decisions in the form of unnecessary changes in the names of places including roads, cities, etc., are not helping either.
Not to forget, even the amount spent on the security of the VIPs costs a bomb to the nation. Each time I see a VIP movement, it hurts to see a huge motorcade escorting the VIP’s vehicle. It not only costs in tangible terms (fuel, vehicle depreciation, driver salary, etc.) but also costs in intangible terms – in form of precious manpower, which could be used elsewhere in a productive manner. Plenty of times, we see advertisements asking the citizens to donate during natural calamities. Honestly, I’m not sure if any public servant also does the same.
Why not apply the famous saying of the great Mahatma Gandhi where he says, “Be the change you wish to see in this world” here? Though I would like to rephrase it and put it in this manner: “Be the one to forego your perks before asking the citizens to do so”.
Rather than singing the same song of fiscal deficit and finding new ways to collect duties and taxes, the government should seriously contemplate to effectively utilize our hard-earned money.
While we have had numerous bold reforms in the last few years, can be expect something on this front?
Do share your thoughts on this.
Originally published on the author’s LinkedIn profile (https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/spiraling-fiscal-deficit-time-adopt-some-austerity-measures-gulati) on 31 January 2020.