Bolder ideas welcome

Congress president Sonia Gandhi has offered a set of five suggestions to the government on cutting down on expenditure in response to a call given by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. It’s a welcome step that the government and the Opposition have come together at the time of a national crisis. However, it’s disappointing to note that that the steps Ms Gandhi has suggested would not add much to the national efforts to tide over the situation; some of them will in fact undermine them.

The Congress president’s suggestions on a blanket 30 per cent cut on Central expenditure other than on salaries, pensions and central schemes are in line with the fiscal conservatism neoliberal economists often advance. True, the government should cut wasteful expenditure but it should find new avenues to pump in more money into the economy if we were to survive as a nation. A safety net for the migrant labour is welcome but what they need more is labour, for which the economy will look up to the government in these trying times. The government should spend more, not less. Her suggestion on a blanket ban on foreign tours by the top functionaries of the government, including the President and the Prime Minister, serves little purpose other than tokenism. Her suggestion on cutting back advertisements to the media on government projects, if implemented, could ensure that only the big fish with corporate backing will survive. The proposal to postpone the `20,000 crore central vista project to build a new Parliament building and the transfer of the funds received under PM-Cares scheme to the Prime Minister’s National Relief Fund, however, deserve serious consideration by the government. It may be noted that the Congress has asked for no cut in defence expenditure, which could have provided the government the much-needed financial leeway. Perhaps, it is afraid of being branded anti-national by the right-wingers.