This was done at the suggestion of the Planning Commission to control public spending in the central and state governments. The plan panel and the Finance Ministry were completely unaware when they took this decision, that ZBB in government was abandoned even in America, the country of its origin, five years before Ganapati sent out his letter.

In this year's budget speech, Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha promised three main steps to reduce government spending, the rapid and alarming growth of which was a ``critical source of concern'' to the government. One of these steps was ZBB, which was to come into force with the next budget.

But recently the FM has putforward ZBB as the principal instrument to deal with the worrying increase in the budget deficit. It is reported that ``ZBB will be the buzzword for all government departments'' from now on, according to the Finance Ministry which has decided to go full steam for ZBB.

We have all heard of the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing. But here is an example of when the right hand does not have the faintest idea of what it itself is doing. ZBB was introduced with a lot of fanfare over 10 years ago, and it has not been, so far as is known, withdrawn since then. It has been introduced now, as something new. As a magic wand to wave away all the financial problems of the government. And that's something beyond belief.

The Maharashtra government abandoned ZBB nearly 10 years back.More absurd is the fact that the Finance Ministry does not seem to be aware at all that ZBB is a thing of the past and that no other government in the world uses it. The federal government in the United States and a few stategovernments there adopted ZBB for a few years about 20 years back and then abandoned it altogether. It was messy, involved too much work and produced little results.It was Jimmy Carter who introduced it in the federal government when he was the president. It was abandoned in 1981 within days of his leaving the White House. A report by the General Accounting Office to the US Congress was severely critical of ZBB.

It was Peter A Pyhrr, former employee of Texas Instruments who brought ZBB into fashion through an article in Harvard Business Review in the Seventies. It was suitable to the needs of private companies but not for governments. Pyhrr himself is not heard of these days and has vanished without a trace. It is inconceivable that the Finance Ministry, in this age of rapid communications, has not heard anything about all this and should hit upon ZBB as the financial missile to be launched against the recalcitrant budget deficit.

Equally curious is the fact that the Ministry of Personnel andAdministrative Reforms published a treatise on ZBB about 10 years ago, for circulation among government offices for the edification of their employees. It was written by a Professor of Management of the Institute of Public Administration in Jaipur and was based on completely out-of-date information. The author, it turned out, was not even aware that ZBB had been abandoned by the US Federal Government in 1981, several years before the treatise was written. I wrote to the author in March 1993 pointing this out.

He replied promptly, frankly admitting that he agreed that ``ZBB in terms of its application in the Government of India and abroad has gone absolete'', to use his own words. I leave it to the readers to form their own opinion about the way the financial experts in government function. Rajiv Gandhi's government introduced ZBB on the heels of the Bofors contract and the present government has embraced it with passion.

As ZBB will not work, the FM has to look elsewhere for ways of reducing unnecessaryspending. His second tool is the Expenditure Reforms Commission, in which he reposes much faith, to get over his difficulties. The commission is to be headed by an eminent person and is meant to ``reduce the role and the administrative structure of the government''. It is not quite clear what is meant by reducing the administrative structure of the government. But we will assume that the commission is meant to deal with the growing non-plan expenditure. The problem of the budget deficits in the central and state governments is much too serious and pressing to be left to be dealt with leisurely by a commission of the type contemplated by government.

Even if we assume that the commission's report will be available in a year's time, it will be too late for use in preparing the next budget.

The commission is old wine in a new bottle. P Chidambaram in his budget speech introducing the 1996-97 budget said: ``I propose to appoint a high-level Expenditure Management and Reforms Commission comprising distinguishedpolitical leaders, economists and administrators. This Commission will be given four months and I hope no more to submit its recommendations on public expenditure management and control as far as the Central Government is concerned''. Chidambaram could not even appoint the commission since suitable men could not be found.

To hope that an Expenditure Commission will produce quick solutions is something like the fire services saying that they will put out the fire as soon as the fire engines for the purchase of which tenders have been called arrive. The third step promised by the FM in his budget speech to reduce public spending is to downsize government. Sooner said than done. The minister promised to abolish four posts of Secretaries in the Central Government. This has not been done. There are more Secretaries now, than when he'd made the promise.

Cutting subsidies, disinvestment, improved revenue collection and downsizing (about all of which there is constant talk) will not produce amounts anywherenear what is required to fill the gap between revenue and spending. Budget preparation has already started and the government is as short of ideas as money.

There is an immediate need for first aid measures. It is not political leaders or economists who can spot waste, fraud and unnecessary spending in government as Chidambaram thought but people familiar with the budget documents, who can spot weaknesses. Some kind of financial blood hounds who can smell their way around the budgets and the accounts. It will not take more than a few weeks to determine areas where fraud and waste occur, which amounts to tens of thousands of crores of rupees a year. The Bihar fodder scam is by no means an isolated case. The CAG and his auditors are in an excellent position to help the government. But their priorities are altogether different. They have been in recent years so active trotting the globe for UN audit, that the CAG, V K Shunglu has not visited Bihar even once to see for himself what is going wrong there. CAG'saudit reports have not even been touched for years by the Public Accounts Committees of the state legislatures.

Obsolete remedies borrowed from abroad will not solve the budget crisis. Desi remedies are needed. They are cheap and readily available. Why not avail of them?