KOCHI: Finance Minister K M Mani will present his tenth Budget in the Assembly on Monday. Mani, with his vast experience in the Finance Department and his special style in presenting the budget speech right from 1976 is treated as a veteran in the field.The Constitution stipulates that the existing practice of preparation and presentation of the Annual Financial Statement of receipts and expenditure be tabled in the respective legislative bodies of the State or Centre. The State of Kerala was formed in 1956. Since then 53 budgets have been presented and passed by 17 Finance Ministers. The accompanying table provides a brief history of the presentation of the Finance Ministers who presented these 53 annual Budgets. Of the 17 Finance Ministers who presented the budgets in the state Assembly since 1957, only four could present and get passed five or more budgets during the tenure of their respective governments. From the table it can be seen that seven Finance Ministers were able to present only one full budget. But Mani presented and passed three full budgets and that also under three different coalitions. The budgets of the states and of the Central Government are mainly based on plan and programmes of the ruling political party(ies). The main leaders in the government and the finance ministers have a strong role in the preparation and presentation of the budgets.As the government is elected for a specific period, there may not be much variations in the budgets presented in the consecutive periods except in the case of the budget presented just before the declaration of the election. There may be differences in the budgets presented by different finance ministers of different governments. For instance, the budgets presented by Finance Minister C Achutha Menon in March 1959 and March 1971 in the governments with different political allies and the budgets presented by the present Finance Minister K M Mani in March 1976, March 1980 and in June 2011 without a change in the political allies requires further study. In such cases, it is necessary to understand the policies and plans the Finance Minister takes in order to account for the long term development of the state. In spite of the Constitutional provisions in the budget, the actual financial statement of the state gets shaped from the outlook and attitudes of the respective finance ministers. Hence, a proper study of the financial strength and the demands of developmental growth need to be studied in depth to formulate sound proposals.(The author is Research Associate, Nodal Centre for Kerala, Cusat.The views expressed in the article are the author’s own)
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