Budgetary over-reach: There is a price for trying to do too much in Budgets

The larger economy suffers more than the central govt, as New Delhi is allowed to get away with behaving arbitrarily and then hiding the reality behind bogus numbers, writes T N Ninan

The problem with the Budget in recent years is not that they didn’t do enough. Rather, finance ministers tried to do too much. This is not just with regard to tax revenue, on which the assumptions went particularly wrong last year (2018-19) and may do so again this year, but also with expenditure. For instance, this year’s central expenditure on “schemes” and projects is slated to be fully 48 per cent more than two years ago. Even if the money were available, would government departments be able to spend on that scale?
 
When it comes to gross tax revenue,