Modi’s austerity drive needs real measures

The austerity measures announced by the Narendra Modi government, which include a 10 per cent reduction in non-planned expenditure, not filling vacant posts and cutting down five-star travel with spouses etc., can at best be largely symbolic and cannot be expected to make a significant dent in the massive expenses in non-plan expenditure.

The subsidy on petroleum products alone is around Rs 63,500 crore, not including what the government owes the oil marketing companies from last year, and gold imports are around $3.5 billion.

The point is these measures are like using a band-aid to stop the bleeding from an artery. Besides, the government had heroically committed itself to maintaining the 4.1 per cent fiscal deficit target fixed by the earlier government. It has already crossed 75 per cent of this by October and there are still four months to go.

The government surely knows that its announced measures are not enough. And if they are, then it should give a break-up of how much of the Rs 12.9 lakh crore of non-plan expenditure it intends to save through the measures announced.

It will have to seriously combine other measures with the announced ones if it is to make any dent in the fiscal deficit that threatens to go well past the 4.1 per cent Lakshman rekha.

For instance, it would have to take fuel conservancy measures on a war-footing, along with boosting the use of renewable energy.

There seems to be no word on this from power minister Piyush Goel, who should match the fervour of the Prime Minister.

These are indispensable if the subsidy on petroleum products is to go down. India is blessed with all that is needed to have widespread use of wind and solar power and yet, these are growing at snail’s pace and it is inexcusable.

Mr Goel can get the wind, solar power and bio-fuel producers together and see what is hampering progress and set a target that should be achieved.

On the gold front, the gem and jewellery industry has proffered several measures that can be taken to bring out at least one to two per cent of the gold lying idle in the country but the government does not seem interested.

Imports too will have to be reduced drastically. Several initiatives, like Make in India, have been announced but measures to make these happen are yet to be taken at the ground level.

The one-window system for permissions is still to become a reality and so are the other factors that could enable the ease of doing business to happen.

It is hoped that Prime Minister Modi himself will look into these issues as they are too serious a matter to be left to overburdened ministers, even if they work 24x7.