Babus and Budget: Disinvestment department to be called DIPAM; Jaitely clips discretionary power of taxmen

Bureaucrats Behind the Budget

AFTER renaming the ministry of agriculture as the ministry of agriculture and farmers welfare — a politically correct name, the government on Monday announced the renaming of one more department, the department of disinvestment. The disinvestment department, which is one of five departments under the ministry of finance, will now be known as DIPAM— Department of Investment and Public Asset Management. Finance minster Arun Jaitley while presenting his 3rd Union Budget on Monday also empowered NITI Aayog to…

Budget preparation begins amid shaky economic ground; what did 5 Finmin secretaries discuss on Monday?

Finance Ministry secretaries discuss about economy, budget

A DAY before Prime Minister’s meeting on global economic scenario with captains of industry including Reliance Industries Ltd chairman Mukesh Ambani, Tata group chairman Cyrus Mistry and Airtel group chairman Sunil Mittal, RBI Governor, top government officials, bankers and leading economists etc. today at his residence in 7 Race Course Road, the finance ministry on Monday had an all-secretary meeting. Chaired by newly-designated finance secretary and 1978 batch IAS Ratan P Watal (who is also in charge of expenditure department), the meeting took stock of the present economic crisis and discussed about creating a mechanism of better co-ordination among five departments belonging to the finance ministry, as the preparation of the next General Budget, to be presented in February 2016, had actually begun. Now, such meetings involving all five finance ministry departments will be held on…

Budget Secrecy, Halwa Ceremony: 100 finance ministry officials will be confined to North Block basement till Feb 28

THE printing process of the Budget document to be presented by union finance minister Arun Jaitley on February 28 began in the basement of North Block on Friday after the finance ministry bigwigs participated in a traditional event called “halwa ceremony”. As finance minister and North Block officials enjoyed the halwa (see photo), the final chapter on budget secretary, something unheard of in…

Rs 462 crore budgeted for CBI; Rs 210 crore for training of bureaucrats

Students visiting CBI headquarters

INVESTIGATION is costly. If you closely examine the budget provisions for 2013-14, you will find finance minister has actually earmarked Rs 462 crore for Central Bureau of Investigation alone vis-à-vis mere Rs 210 crore for training of senior bureaucracy. Let’s have a look at how the CBI will spend this amount:

DEA secretary Arvind Mayaram, his PhD and a letter to his departed son

“You would always smile and say 'C'mon dad, you can do it!'. I did it beta.” This is what DEA secretary and one of the key bureaucrats behind today’s Union Budget -- Arvind Mayaram wrote to his son when he received the doctorate on FDI in India. Mayaram lost his 23-year-old son Anirudh, an episode that shattered him and his family. Courtesy Anirudh Mayaram Foundation, BoI presents here the excerpts of Mayaram’s letter to his son dated October 13, 2007…

Batchmates’ Budget: How officials ensure that Budget does not get leaked

Gopalan (L), Gujral, Bose (R). FM's adviser Omita Paul is seen

IT’S a rare occasion that preparations of this general Budget were anchored by three IAS batch-mates. Call it a mere coincidence. RS Gujral, finance secretary in charge of revenue department, Sumit Bose, expenditure secretary and R Gopalan, secretary, department of economic affairs (DEA) are in fact 1976 batch IAS. The other two North Block secretaries, financial services secretary DK Mittal and disinvestment secretary Mohammad Haleem Khan are both one batch junior to them.

The job of preparing the Budget that begins in November every year is handled by DEA. But departments like revenue and expenditure give critical inputs to the document and become part and parcel of the entire Budget making process. The finance minister can undertake changes in the document till it goes for printing six days before it’s to be presented in Parliament. As high degree of secrecy is maintained, the Budget document is printed at the press located in North Block’s basement itself.

Most officers working in finance ministry have no idea whether there will be any tax cut or increase in excise duties! Also, a secretary in charge of one department does not know what’s in store for issues related to other departments. The one person who reads the Budget from top to bottom is the DEA joint secretary in charge of the Budget. He along with a few junior officials stay round the clock in North Block at least for the last 10 days. They need to ensure that nothing gets leaked before it’s presented in Parliament on the B-Day. The guys working in the printing press are not allowed to go home when the document is being printed. Packed lunch and dinner, brought from outside, are served there.

But should there be such an aura of secrecy when many policy announcements and even hikes of petroleum prices are done outside the Budget? Once the Direct Tax Code is in place, there will be no surprise tax front in any future Budget. The reality is that in days to come, the Budget may no longer be such a high secret affair!

Mamata announces a slew of welfare measures for railway employees; should civil servants expect sops from Mukherjee on Monday?

THE 1.4 million-strong railway brigade across the country has reasons to cheer after railway minister Mamata Banerjee announced a number of sops to railway employees in her Rail Budget presented in Lok Sabha on Friday. Before coming to what finance minister Pranab Mukherjee can do for government employees including officials during the General Budget to be presented on Monday, let’s list some of welfare measures announced by the railway minister for railway employees. a) The contribution of Staff Benefit Fund would be enhanced to Rs 350 per railway employee by one year. According to the announcement in Rail Budget, out of this contribution, a sum of Rs 100 per employee will be used exclusively for activities relating to women empowerment. This would also include the provision for vocational and occupational skill development training for physically and mentally challenged wards of railway employees, especially the girl child and higher education for girls. b) Ms Banerjee also announced the proposal to construct 6560 staff quarters during the year 2009-10. A thrust would be given under the Corporate Welfare Plan for improvement of staff quarters and colonies. The Budget also proposes to set up indoor stadia in major railway divisions and zones to promote sports and cultural activities amongst the railway employees. Scholarship for higher education of girl children of Group D staff will be launched. Seven nursing colleges on railway land in Delhi, Kolkata, Mumbai (Kalyan), Chennai, Secunderabad, Lucknow and Jabalpur will be opened on Public Private Partnership (PPP) mode. The Budget also envisages to establish medical colleges attached to existing railway hospitals through PPP mode to give higher education facilities to the wards of railway employees. The locations where such colleges are planned include: Chennai, Hyderabad, Bilaspur, Lucknow, Barasat, Bhubaneswar, Mysore, Kharagpur, Guwahati, Dibrugarh, Jodhpur, Gardenreach, Nagpur, Ahmedabad, B.R. Singh Hospital, Bhopal, Jammu and Trivandrum. It was also announced that the General Managers would be empowered to sanction cases upto Rs 4 lakh for special medical treatment of railway persons. The Budget also provides for construction of dormitories for ladies and gents who accompany the patients at 16 hospitals having 150 beds and above. Burn Units will be provided at major railway hospitals of Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Secunderabad, Bangalore and B R Singh Hospital, Kolkata.

Mukherjee on Monday: What Babus should expect from General Budget? No major initiative is expected to be announced in the Budget which will have a direct impact on civil servants except finance minister Pranab Mukherjee’s direct tax sops would make bureaucrats happy as well. The possible raising of the income tax slabs or restoration of standard deduction would help the bureaucrats as well to save some hard cash.

North Block officials speculate on who would be the next Finance Minister

The officials of the ministry of finance in India have begun speculating on who would be the next finance minister as they have started the process of preparing the general Budget to be presented by the next government in June, 2009. Kapil Sibal from the Congress party could be a major contender to be the finance minister if the Congress comes back to power. Finmin officials, who all worked under P Chidambaram in most part of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government, were sure that the current home minister would get no chance to stage a comeback to Finmin even if the Congress manages a similar mandate as in 2004. Also, Pranab Mukherjee, current incumbent, is unlikely to be the full-fledged finance minister as he would take up either external or defence portfolio, officials felt. However, if the BJP-led NDA (National Democratic Alliance) forms the next government, the general feeling in the North Block is that the party's old hat Yaswant Sinha, who is contesting from Hazaribagh in Jharkhand, would present the next Budget. Another BJP veteran Jaswant Singh, who is fighting an electoral battle from Darjeeling constituency in West Bengal, could also be a contender. Yet, no babu in North Block could hazard a guess who would be the country's finance minister if BSP (Bahujan Samaj Party) supremo Mayawati turns lucky to occupy 7, Race Course Road, the official residence of the Prime Minister of India. But yes, Finmin's experienced team of preparing Budget are already getting nervous if Ms Mayawati appoints a Left veteran, say Sitaram Yechurry, as the country's next finance minister!