As a result of the zero based budgeting, the finance ministry must set up a well staffed spending monitoring arm which will not only figure out where the money has gone, but also how well it is being spent. As for every scheme, the objective is to maximize benefits for the people it is intended and to reduce the administrative costs and waste.

The sixth reform we would like to see is that the differentiation between plan and non-spending does not make any sense any more and hence we need to know that whether we are spending money on creating assets or in feeding people and administration, which is nothing but capital outlay and revenue outlay. C. Rangarajan, PM’s Advisory Council Head, already supports this change, so we are hoping it would get implemented.

Every tax proposals of the budget must state clearly that who and what are likely to be benefitted from it, especially in case if the beneficiary is a company. Most of the times there are two or more beneficiaries as very often a concession is announced. Hence these new tax proposals should be transparent and candid. Even if a policy has only one beneficiary, it is fine, but we need to know this now and not later when all the scandal already happened.