On The Budget Again

It is not generally known that the procedure in respect of the Budget in its gestation period, on account of the fear of leakage in respect of new levies, gives a kind of total discretion to the Finance Minister. The Cabinet members, including even the Prime Minister, are kept totally in the dark about the most important points in the proposals until the very last moment, when naturally the PM unconversant with the subject has to say “Well, I have entrusted the job to you and it is your responsibility, carry on!”

     At the party meeting immediately thereafter, in the dazed atmosphere, people get to imagine and frame all sorts of theories about the proposals, and loyalty to the PM is badly mixed up with analysis. Party members do not have any notion as to how much the PM is responsible for and how much the Finance Minister, and they dare not ask or hope to get answers even if they dared to ask. Thus no useful examination is possible at the party meeting. In this as in other matters, every one expects every other to do his duty and does not wish to expose oneself to special attention. The so-called law of secrecy of the Budget thus gives arbitrary power for the Finance Minister. It can work well only if the PM is also Finance Minister or, if one may put it in more realistic form, the Finance Minister is also the Prime Minister and leader of the party. These observations apply with treble force to the present unprecedented budget of new levies.

     Sri JawaharlaI Nehru has satisfied himself that the Budget “as a whole has a good reception”. Can delusion go farther than this? But it is true also that our industrialist-victims caught in the economic grip of the present regime give cause for such erroneous complacency on the part of the Government, by hesitating to undertake the risks and sacrifices involved in open resistance. No battle of any kind, moral or physical, was ever won or can ever be won unless such risk is undertaken. The people of our country have a capacity for credulity and forgiveness that is unrivalled anywhere on earth. Perhaps this is our greatness also and has in history enabled us to endure. But it causes the country to be saddled today with ministers who undoubtedly deserve to be voted out.

     Greetings to Rajkumari Amrit Kaur who held truth and conscience higher than party-ties and treated the unbecoming remarks of the Finance Minister with the contempt such unbecoming remarks deserve. Rajkumari has made a noteworthy contribution to the record of political independence. May her example inspire others to rise from love of party to love of nation.

     Most improperly and irrelevantly the Finance Minister said she had behaved like Katherine Mayo. The American authoress wrote a book in which she ridiculed our people and our customs. Amrit Kaur as a member of the Rajya Sabha criticized and condemned the Budget placed before the House for criticism. The Finance Minister like most of his party men confused party with nation. The only connection between Miss Mayo’s book and Rajkumari’s criticism was that both were women and both used good English.

     Rajkumari is not a politician. She has never taken part in Congress Party politics. She has never gone to any AICC meeting. She has a constitutional right to criticize the Budget when she honestly—and rightly in the opinion of a vast body of thinking independent people—felt that the Budget was not a good one and the taxation proposed would crush the middle classes depending on static incomes. What is the sense or decency in the Finance Minister saying that the lady continued “to profit by her association” with the Congress Party? Her loyalty to Mahatmaji was of the highest quality. Because he had asked her, she entered the Cabinet in order to help the PM. As Minister she worked hard and did what she thought was right and made no profit for herself out of it. After leaving the Cabinet she has been doing everything in an honorary capacity spending out of her own pocket. She owes nothing to the Congress even if that should be an argument to suppress honest opinion and truth from being expressed in the nation’s parliament.

     I presume it is the claim of ‘socialist’ governments that their annual budgets are calculated to reduce disparities between the more prosperous and the poorer sections of the community. Now, about the effect of the kerosene tax, will it reduce the disparity between the capitalist and the worker? C—W will be bigger now than before because the kerosene tax is a very small fraction of C whereas it is a sizable fraction of W. So will be the effect of all indirect taxes levied on the principle of a ‘broad base’, i.e., on the commonly and most widely used commodities. Even a school boy can see this obvious effect of every one of the taxes that have been newly levied. The same is the effect of the compulsory cut on savings. It is a definite deduction of a larger share of the total income of the poorer than that of the richer man. It does not call for any knowledge of abstruse mathematics to see this. “But it is saved for you, not taken away!” Answer: “What will you do with the saving? Just what you have been doing with all other moneys collected by taxes, more disparity now, God knows what, later on”.

     But the most obvious contradiction between profession and practice shows up in the case of the gold-workers. These millions of self-employed artisans have been thrown into the sea of unemployment. Has the Government reduced the disparity between them and the wealthy folk? Has not the disparity been widened to the point of tragedy by a deliberate and unnecessary and useless act on the part of the Government? Chief Justice Warren said in a very fine and striking way that “in civilized life, law floats in a set of ethics”. Without ethics, he pointed out, law itself cannot exist. The truth can be expanded further and put in Indian idiom. Government floats in a sea of Dharma.

     Without Dharma government is a sham and an evil—an infliction and a danger Instead of being a protection. No, Sri Morarji! Your work is not done when the numbers on the balance-sheet come out even; that would be a book-keeper’s Work, not that of a ruler of men. The PM has confessed that the Budget has “imposed large burdens on the relatively less prosperous people.” Is this either Socialism or dharma on which government float

     The impress of criticism on Government varies with who says it, even more than what is said. When industry speaks through Kasturbhai Lalbhai of Ahmedabad and J. R. D. Tata and H. V. R. lengar, and Rajkumari Amrit Kaur, rising from among the Congress benches behind the Finance Minister, speaks on behalf of the middle class intelligentsia with fixed incomes who form the back-bone of the Indian nation, the condemnation ought to go home. The temper and the irrelevancies indulged in, when replying, show that straight answers were not available.