The finance ministry now sees little hope of containing the fiscal deficit to within 5.1 per cent this year as the eight-fold initiative to curb the runaway increase in government expenditure, announced in the budget, does not seem to have made much headway with most ministries.
Finance ministry officials admit that their deadlines to most ministries to act on staff and unit reduction have drawn a poor response.
For instance, they say that even though the zero based budget review of every central government department's budget was to be completed by the end of this month, only 20-odd departments have sent in their proposals for cuts.
This includes eight which had already been reviewed last year. Finance minister Yashwant Sinha had said these steps would
