Extraordinary economic circumstances merit extraordinary measures,” declares the finance minister in his new Budget, the last one of this government. “Now is the time to take such measures.” And then proceeds not to take them at all!

“But it is just an interim budget,” apologists suddenly remember. “He has stuck to convention.” I must confess that I was not in the least surprised at the readiness with which so many commentators — both from industry and from media — swallowed and regurgitated this rationalisation.

Is there a Constitutional convention — to say nothing of any other kind — that this government has let stand in the way of what it has wanted done? Is there an agency or office it has hesitated to use as an instrument? The governor’s office? The CBI? How come this sudden fidelity to the “convention” of interim budgets? And how come, given that fidelity, the “convention” has not prevented it from budgeting an additional expenditure of Rs. one lakh forty thousand crore? And just see what has happened since the budget was presented: the share market plunged further down; everyone began grumbling — the government has not given the stimulus that was expected and that is absolutely necessary; as a consequence within a week of not including the stimulus package out of respect for convention, Pranab Mukherjee declares that such a package will be announced if it is needed. Presumably the convention won’t come in the way as it did a week ago!

It is not convention that has kept the government from taking the necessary measures. It is knowledge. Even this government, which has all along refused to recognise how serious is the crisis in which its mismanagement has pushed the country’s economy, has now been awakened — by job losses across the country, by plummeting production indices, by mounting defaults and the consequential pressure on banks — that the economy has been brought to an abyss. As a result, stern measures are now unavoidable. And for these, this non-government hasn’t got the gumption. That knowledge is the reason for its doing nothing, plus the fact, as we shall soon see, that its financial profligacy has left little headroom for the kind of fiscal measures that are required. Not any sudden devotion to convention.

... contd.