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| Budgets and Spirituality | | | Pramod Pathak
All modern countries carry out this exercise of balancing their revenue and expenditure. Where will the money come from and where will it go? In popular jargon this is presentation of the national Budget. With time, of course, it proves to be more notional than national, but that cannot be controlled given the vagaries of the markets countries are subject to in the globalised economic order.
This is the reason why many call economics a dismal science. Of course it also is a decimal science given those small percentages that are raised or reduced in taxes and surcharges. Perhaps, economics approximates medicine when it comes to cause and effect relationship between the prescription and the outcome. One reason why doctors are wont to write illegibly.
Economists, however, don't exercise that option. They therefore take the help of statistics which invariably has that leverage of levels of confidence which in reality leaves room for uncertainty. Nevertheless the success of practitioners of both the sciences depends on compliance. That, however, is for the academic debate.
Coming to practical aspects: the one differentiator between Budgets of India and other countries is the kind of public gaze and media attention that the budgetary exercise attracts. Perhaps in no other country so much of media splash accompanies this annual exercise which is largely ritualistic. To borrow from a popular Bollywood number, 'It happens only in India'. From anxiety to anticipation, apprehensions to advisories, all precede the budgetary exercise.
And finally on the day of the reckoning, the Finance Minister has to present the country's income and expenditure account. With all eyes staring, all ears listening, laced in poetry, camouflaged in prose, the Budget is unravelled. As Urdu couplets are recited to ornament the Budget speech, discussions start simultaneously. Myriad of experts mushroomed in maybe the past two weeks start throwing their ideas on the shape of the economy to unfold in the aftermath of the Budget.
As people masquerading as economists air their views, the share markets begin undulating. And there is this typical 'did I not tell you so' type of pseudo savant making all kinds of prophesies. From scare crows to cry babies to even agony aunts all emerge during the Budget season that probably lasts a week to 10 days, after which it is the usual business.
Though Budgets have been a practice for a decade, of late the enthusiasm seems to be turning into a frenzy. To test one may just compare the TRP of Budget with the cricket World Cup match of the day. It may be difficult to find out the reason for this but probably we seem to have rediscovered the curiosity of our immediate ancestors in the evolutionary lineage. But too much curiosity may not be always useful.
In Central Bihar there is a saying in the colloquial which means that a monkey's wound becomes a festering sore out of excessive curiosity. Conventional wisdom says little knowledge is dangerous. Little knowledge with more information is even more dangerous. Generalists and journalists notwithstanding. Budgets are not good or bad. What matters is the compliance. The best course is to accept Budgets as fait accompli. The golden lesson is whatever belongs to you, no one can take. And whatever is not yours, no one can give. So the hullabaloo over Budgets is much ado about nothing. Accept Budgets spiritually.
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