Budget: Follow convention

Finance minister Arun Jaitley’s blog post — where he hammered the government’s critics as being “compulsive contrarians” — and his speech from America, where he has gone for treatment, for an awards function where he took to task the “nawabs of negativity” — playing on the expression “nattering nabobs of negativism” coined by former US vice-president Spiro T. Agnew to condemn a very critical media, is all good fun. But the same can’t be said of the hints he threw that on February 1 he is likely to present a regular Budget, not a vote-on-account.

This will be doing violence to a long-held parliamentary convention which has roots in constitutional morality. In our parliamentary system, it’s only an elected government that has the right to impose taxes. This is why the convention grew that an outgoing government, shortly before a general election, issues no fresh proposals regarding taxation.

In order to run the government and manage the affairs of state in the final days of its elected term, the finance minister seeks Parliament’s approval for a vote-on-account in lieu of a regular Budget, that is, the permission to spend already-earmarked funds. The Budget proper — with indications on major policies to be adopted, taxation and expenditure proposals — is rightly understood to be the incoming government’s domain.

A government whose term is ending soon must not saddle its successor with bills it runs up according to its lights. Thus Mr Jaitley’s hint that he might bypass convention to help out farmers and take other measures is veering in the wrong direction.