09:47 Expect Jaitley to speak mostly in Hindi today: In a break from tradition, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley is likely to deliver significant portions of his Budget speech on Thursday, particularly those related to the farm sector, in Hindi, report Indivjal Dhasmana and Archis Mohan in Business Standard.
In his previous four Budgets, the FM, who is adept at speaking in both English and Hindi, has been known to intersperse his mostly English speech with Hindi and Urdu couplets and explanatory observations.
However, sources said the FM’s fifth and final Budget speech of the current term of the Narendra Modi government will be truly bilingual, with Jaitley speaking at length in Hindi to reach out to the Hindi heartland.
Recently, Prime Minister Narendra Modi received much appreciation for delivering his speech at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos in Hindi.
External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj has consistently spoken in Hindi at media interactions with visiting dignitaries and on international forums, such as the United Nations General Assembly. Former prime minister A B Vajpayee had, as India’s external affairs minister, addressed the UN General Assembly in Hindi for the first time in the late 1970s.
The Budget is expected to address rural distress and the common man by focusing on agriculture, job creation, and health.
The speech will be the government’s way to reach out to the common man to present its most important economic document.
09:40 Kaushik Basu, who served as chief economic advisor to the UPA government from December 2009 to July 2012, tweets: ‘Reading India’s Economic Survey 2017-18 it is clear that the Survey is in very good shape. I wish I could say the same for what it surveys.’
09:21 NGO calls for transparency, citizen’s budget: Claiming that the budgetary process in India was not transparent enough, an NGO has urged the government to place more information related to the budget in the public domain.
As Finance Minister Arun Jaitley gears up to present the Union Budget 2018-19 today, the NGO, Transparency International India, said on parameters of international standards on budget transparency, the Indian budget was considered “less transparent” as it put only “limited” information in the public domain.
“Budgetary process in India is still non-transparent, non-participative with poor accessibility by citizenry,” it said in a press release.
While the government “boasts its intentions of transparency”, India ranks low on indicators representing budget transparency, it said, demanding greater openness in the budgetary process.
“India is not one of the most transparent countries. India scored 48 on 100 in the open budget survey of 2017. It is interesting to see that all the major powers of the world do have better transparency in their budget processes as compared to other countries,” it said.
This meant that for a nation to emerge as a promising democracy, “transparency in the system” would be a key factor, it said. “India among its neighbouring countries fares better than all but Bangladesh. Economically not as sound as India, Bangladesh has better transparency than India in its system,” the statement said.
Despite its utmost importance, the state budget in India remains “one of the most intractable of documents, incomprehensible for ordinary citizens, specialists and non- specialists alike”, it said.
This makes it difficult for the people to participate in shaping public policy, the NGO said.
“The lack of budget transparency cannot simply be treated only as a serious violation of democratic rules and good governance. It leads to severe economic and financial problems related to the spread of corruption and waste…,” it said.
Knowledge of the state budget should not be limited to experts and specialists, the release said.
“It’s high time now for a citizen’s budget for easy understanding of the total budgetary revenue and expenditure statements, the mid-year review pre-budget statement and the audit report to be published on time, not published online or produced only for government use,” it said.
The budget in India was “still more or less the exclusive domain of the civil servant due to quite a complex system and procedure”, it said.
Transparency International India describes itself as a “non-political, independent, non-governmental anti-corruption organisation”.
Source: Rediff