Govt. of India must file Returns

Govt. of India must file Return to the citizens


There is a customary ritual pre-budget address by the President of India to the nation on a previous day. It should be authenticated with facts and figures, which should include the following:

1. To take an account of the previous budget's provisions;


2. The actual expenses incurred, and where it was not consumed;


3. The areas where the budgetary provisions where utilized, and not utilized, and how many people were benefited, how many are left over;


4. How much amount of the provisions were spent for the government executive machinery - personnel, transport, allowances, salaries, perks etc.


5. What were the success and failures of each project, mission, campaign, Abhiyan etc. in terms of reaching the target groups, and implementation, and usefulness.

In other words, the governments - at the centre, states, districts, cities and village panchayat levels (i.e. local self-governments) must file their annual returns just as individuals and associations are made to file the return on their income and expenditure and performance.

In fact, all the corporations and undertakings of the governments and local self-governments must also be subjected to file their returns of their performance every year to be scrutinized by the citizens.

According to the region - the nation or the states - should file their returns in all the regional or the respective languages of the regions, and should be published in the national and local newspapers.

It is unfortunate that budget speech is in English, and our government cannot afford to make it available in all the regional languages, at least those mentioned on our currency notes, so that a larger number of citizens could access it.

Why the Budget Speech should be only in English? Why this Neo-Brahminism in the secular India?

Let the citizens too do the Monitoring and Evaluation of their government's performance every year rather than waiting for the election times to hear the lies and concocted stories by the contestants!

~~~~
© Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.