The treatise on financial matters attributed to Vishnu Gupta of 2,500 years vintage, also referred to by names Kautilya and Chanakya, one of the officials in the court of King Chandragupta Maurya, a copy of which on palm leaf discovered by a Mysuru-based researcher B.V. Shastri in the city’s Oriental Research Institute more than 100 years ago, is more quoted by many speakers on different platforms and occasions than studied for throwing light on the daunting task of balancing revenue and expenses of the State. Preparing budgets for successive years by governments at levels in the range of Panchayats to the Nation’s Parliament routinely appears to have given the impression that the exercise doesn’t seem difficult, prompting Mark Twain’s humorous quote: “Giving up smoking is very easy because I have done it many times.”

While the citizens, required to pay taxes on myriad counts, are disinclined to pay up the rates stipulated by the authorities on a rising scale year on year, those with Finance portfolio in the governments to spend sleepless nights on mopping up the revenue needed without even winking at trimming the expenses. Right now, the country’s Finance Minister’s mind-boggling bugbear happens to be the fiscal deficit staring before the official in the high post.

Reducing the government’s fiscal deficit, the yawning gap between its total revenue from all sources and budgetary provision for the business of the government, primarily to meet the cost of all its programmes and timely payment of the salaries of the Army staff (currently about 4.5 million) and pensions of those who have retired (currently about 5.5 million) may be pursued impassionately by the Finance Minister of the day as opposed to the case of individual citizens. The former is done by borrowing from the public sources including corporates while the latter, as familiar to all, results in loans.

The total spend of the Union Government on salaries of all its employees (both civil and defence) is currently estimated at 3.23 trillion rupees for 2018-19 (around 13 percent of its total expenditure of 24.42 trillion rupees). Total pensions for retired civilian staff and armed forces at 2.77 trillion rupees (about 11 percent of total expenditure and 86 percent of total salary bill) should prompt the beneficiaries to sit up and think of measures to hold the bull of the financial burden by its horns.