The warnings having been given, the task is done – what more are consultants to do, after all? There is no mention of the subject in Chidambram’s Budget speech this year.

But there is mention of one of these subsidies – that on fertilizers – in the document distributed with the Budget, Implementation of Budget 2007-2008. In the Budget for 2007/08, Chidambram had emphasized the need to distribute fertilizer subsidies by some alternate way – so that they reach the farmer directly rather than being eaten up by fertilizer companies. So, what is going to be done? ‘The fertilizer industry has agreed to work with the Department of Fertilizers,’ he told Parliament, ‘to conduct a study and find a solution.’ And what will happen once the study has been done? By now, you should be able to guess: ‘Based on the report, Government intends to implement a pilot programme in at least one district in each State in 2007-08.’

That was the last Budget. And what are we told now about what has been done on this matter? ‘The modalities for providing an alternative method of delivering the fertilizer subsidy directly to the farmer are being worked out. The proposal was examined by a Group of Ministers (GOM) and the Report is being finalized.’

In the meanwhile, all the ills continue: the industry does not get reimbursed in time; the farmer does not get the full benefit; the application of fertilizers remains distorted and our land is harmed.

Exactly the position in regard to the other subsidy, of Rs. 32,600 crore – that on food: the 61st Round of the NSS reveals that one half of the poorest quintile do not have either a BPL card or one for the Antyodaya Anna Yojana. On the other hand, more than a sixth of the richest quintile have BPL cards!

The Italians have the right expression for it

‘The Eleventh Plan target for additional power generation capacity is 78,577 MW,’ Chidambram told Parliament while speaking on this new Budget, adding, ‘which is more than the total capacity added in the previous three Plans.’ In the 10th Plan the target was 41,000 MW. Additional capacity that got commissioned was just about 21,000 MW. But why be niggardly in setting targets? John Galbriath had a word for Indian Planning: ‘therapeutic targetry’! But the sentence that scores for gall is the next one: ‘By end March 2008, we will achieve Commercial Operation Date (COD) on about 10,000 MW, marking the best first year in any Plan period.’

Just pause for a moment, and read that sentence again: ‘By end March 2008, we will achieve Commercial Operation Date (COD) on about 10,000 MW, marking the best first year in any Plan period.’ The trick in it is the benchmark that has been used, ‘Commercial Operation Date (COD)’ – a plant that has been completed is said to have attained ‘Commercial Operation Date’ once it has been in operation at full load for at least 72 hours. Ten power plants contributing 3020 MW were included when totaling up the achievements of the last year of the 10th Plan on the ground that they had been ‘commissioned’. They have been counted again among the achievements of the first year of the 11th Plan – on the ground that in regard to them ‘Commercial Operation Date’ has been achieved! The plants are the same ten. Nor is it just that: among these ten, is Ratnagiri CCPP (Dabhol) II, a plant that was completed in the Ninth Plan; among them is the atomic power plant at Kaiga – which is virtually shut for want of fuel; among them is Karbilangpi, a plant of the Sixth Plan! Nor indeed do the remaining ten plants – accounting for 3090 MW of the 10,000 MW for which Chidambram takes credit – testify to either reforms or execution in the power sector having improved. Each one of them has been under construction for years – among them is another Dabhol plant, Ratnagiri CCPP III, which too was completed in the Ninth Plan; among them are two plants at Purlia which were sanctioned in the Eighth Plan!

Claims and promises in regard to the Ultra Mega Power Projects in Chidambram’s successive budgets have been even more farcical, even more brazenly misleading. It is our intention to award five projects before December 31, 2006, he told Parliament in the Budget for 2006/07. By the 2007/08 Budget, this became, ‘Seven more UMPPs are under process and we are confident that at least two will be awarded by July, 2007.’ In this Budget, he says that the fourth UMPP ‘will be awarded shortly,’ and that five more can be brought to the bidding stage provided the states extend the requisite support. After listing four Ultra Mega Projects, his document of ‘accountability and transparency’, Implementation of Budget 2007-2008, reports ‘Five other suitable sites have been identified by the Central Electricity Authority’ – it proceeds to list five sites in five states. The fact as of 20 February, 2008 is that not one site has been finalized, not one. In regard to each of them, letters are going to and from central and state governments: I can supply the list at short notice.

And yet you can’t quite say that the Government has lied – notice the words it has used, ‘Five other suitable sites have been identified by the Central Electricity Authority.’ That doesn’t mean they have been settled, and, if you concluded as much, well, that is your problem.

The Italians have the right expression for this kind of reporting: suppressio veri suggestio falsi – to suppress the truth is to suggest the false!

A symptom

And yet the Budget is but a symptom of the ways of the Government:

•Just go on announcing schemes;

•Grab existing schemes, group them, give them a new name, and proclaim them as historic new initiatives;