The maiden budget of the 20 day old MDA Government was presented on Friday by the Chief Minister who is also holding the Finance portfolio. In a first ever for Meghalaya, the Chief Minister has provided live streaming of his budget speech even as he posted snippets of the budget on his Facebook Page. Hence those on social media can view in real time the hourly developments in the life of the present Government vis-a-vis the Departments held by the Chief Minister, Conrad Sangma. His cabinet colleagues however remain out of the purview of social media. Perhaps they are not used to this sort of transparent governance.
The highest outlay this time is for Community & Rural Development @ Rs 1457.94 crore, followed by Education @ Rs 969.64 crore. Health is allocated 613.31 crore which is slightly lower than the amount allocated for Roads and Bridges and which is primarily directed at infrastructure creation. Social Welfare too has received substantial funds of Rs 537.72 crore. It can safely be said that this Budget exercise was engaged in by the State Finance Department much before the election and for whichever ministry would assume power after that. The present Government would have had little time for embellishing the figures. The problem with budgets is that so much depends on implementation. The truth is that spending has been done without measuring outcomes. Perhaps that era is over since it is no longer easy to extract money from a central government that believes in competitive federalism. The NDA Government had abolished the Planning Commission essentially because it did not believe in micro-managing the states by writing cheques for projects that are not necessarily viable.
The MDA Government cannot function on auto pilot as its predecessors had done without an economic vision. As a state, Meghalaya has to have an economic policy and for that it cannot rely on the political and administrative executives only. It has to take the help of local academic and research institutions such as NEHU’s Economics Department to come up with a realistic policy after a robust round of research. This is imperative! Apart from that strict independent monitoring is also necessary to ensure that money is well spent and outcomes can be tangibly measured.