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VIEWPOINT: FIFTH COLUMN
Downsizing
Dilemma
The budget's most vital proposal
may be the most intractable.
By Tavleen Singh
 So,
we have another dream budget. I always have a hard time finding dreamlike
qualities in budgets but this one must be taking us in the right direction
because the Left hates it. That, I always consider a good sign, because
in my view, it is 50 years of socialism that has caused us to remain one
of the poorest countries in the world. Fifty years in which the main beneficiaries
have been government officials. Ostensibly, they are there to protect
the interests of the underprivileged, but the poor have remained mostly
poor and government departments have grown fatter and more burdensome.
As this magazine pointed out in a recent cover story, we now spend Rs
75,000 crore a year on the salaries of our 3.72 million government (Central
and state) employees. This is half the money the Government collects in
taxes.
You would think that even Marxist pundits would
find this sickening but they clearly do not because one of the things
they dislike about Yashwant Sinha's budget is his proposal to cut 66,000
government jobs a year to try reduce government spending. The word ''downsizing''
appears to strike at the very core of their ideological moorings, causing
them to instantly start frothing at the mouth.
 For
those of us who are forced to wander about the corridors of power, stumbling
over heaps of surplus government employees at every step,
it is music to the ears. That the finance minister actually used the word
''downsizing'' in his budget speech is promising; that he went further
and announced cuts in his own ministry is reassuring but much, much more
needs to be done if we are to see a visible difference in government functioning.
There will be resistance, of course, as we can
see from Sushma Swaraj's instant opposition to cuts in her ministry suggested
by the Expenditure Reforms Commission (ERC). No, no, no, she gasped, when
reporters questioned her about them, ''Ours is such a small ministry that
it will not be possible.'' An interesting reaction when you consider that
she heads a ministry that should have ceased to exist years ago when we
gave up trying to pass off government propaganda as information. The very
name ''information & broadcasting'' has an obsolete ring to it and
Sushma has so much time on her hands that she wastes it looking for bare
breasts on Fashion TV. Her ministry wastes its time churning out dreary
Films Division documentaries that nobody watches and continues to use
Doordarshan as a grace and favours department. If Sushma wants to do some
real work she could conduct a survey on the number of programmes that
have been handed out to relatives of her colleagues and find out how this
happened. The ministry performs a list of other useless tasks and if it
ceased to function tomorrow nobody would notice it. Yet, whole floors
of Shastri Bhavan are occupied by I & B Ministry officials. Close
it down, Mr Finance Minister, and do the taxpayers a real favour.
The ERC has also recommended, as pointed out
in the budget speech, the downsizing of the ministries of coal and small-scale
industries and the departments of economic affairs, heavy industry and
public enterprises. Again, the real solution is perhaps to close them
down and chuck the officials into the surplus pool. Any conversation with
the ministers about downsizing is likely to result in a Sushma Swaraj-type
reaction. Who wants to lose their jobs?
If the prime minister wants to get into downsizing
mode and help Sinha a little, then he could reorganise his Cabinet so
that we have ministries that worked cohesively and not at cross purposes.
Why not, for instance, a single ministry of transport to include railways,
aviation and roads? Mamata Banerjee's populism would be much easier to
curtail and we might even be able to off-load Air India and Indian Airlines.
Why not just one ministry of trade and industry instead of a whole lot
of useless, little ones? There isn't enough room in this column to suggest
any more changes but if the prime minister took a small tour of Delhi's
ubiquitous and ugly bhavans he could come up with downsizing suggestions
every step of the way.
But what about jobs for the boys, you will say,
how can he keep his National Democratic Alliance together if he cannot
make party leaders into ministers? Well, he should either start looking
for other ways to keep them happy or get them to agree to drastic cuts
in the size of their staff. If they knew their jobs were at stake they
would, undoubtedly, come up with some creative ideas and if the prime
minister is a true leader he could begin by reducing the size of PMO.
Judging by the complaints emanating from some of his ministers he would
be doing his own Government a huge favour.
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