Articles by B M

Prime Minister's Budget B M THE budget for 1982-83 has evoked significantly contradictory reactions. The leaders of private business and industry are visibly disappointed, largely because it has not come up to their expectations. Their appetite for concessions and incentives had been so much whetted by the last two budgets and the pre-budget trends of official economic policy that they had looked forward to a bonanza. In the event, they feel let down. The concessions are, of course, there, but they are seen as paltry and halting and in terms of the monies involved not much to gloat over. The opposition parties generally have focused on the massive additional taxation, including that imposed by way of upward revision of railway freights and fares and telecommunication charges effected in advance of the presentation of the budget. This has been denounced as heaping fresh burdens on the people and giving a boost to price increases. The Left parties have gone along with similar criticism, and in addition held the budget to be the outcome of IMF influence and dictation.

What matters is the attitude of Western Europe. It is doubtful if any cold war issue in the past had left Europe so divided as the Polish issue seems to have done. This has been the surest guarantee that General Jam- zeteky and his comrades would get away with their systematic, planned assault on Solidarity.

NEW DELHI New Perspective for Steel Development B M THE ouster of K C Khanna from the office of the chairman and managing director of the Steel Authority of India (SAIL) and his transfer to the relatively obscure post of chairman of the Mineral Development Board, which he has so far declined to accept, has caused a flutter among top managements of public sector enterprises. Khanna was after all, regarded as a man with pull and connections in the highest quarters and had won kudos for executing the Kudremukh iron ore project which had been personally assigned to him by the Prime Minister herself. What then happened for Khanna to so suddenly lose his good standing with the powers-that-be? So much so that he was not even remotely aware of what was in store for him till he was actually .served with the sack order.

NEW DELHI IMF's Eager Client B M WHEN 23 economists meeting in Calcutta sonic lime ago warned that "large- scale borrowing from the IMF by some underdeveloped countries has simply meant a .surrender of their economic sovereignty" and stressed that "this is not a path we would like India to follow", it had not been an idle warning. The leakage of the exact terms and conditions on which India is negotiating for a loan of 5 billion SDRs from IMF and the Finance Minister's letter of intent to the IMF authorities has brought home this truth to those who till now had been gullible enough to believe that India might somehow manage to get the IMF loan on specially .soft terms or that the Indian government would resist the "pressure and blackmail" of the IMF. Equally relevant in this context, again, was the warning of the Calcutta meeting of economists that borrowing from the IMF would give the IMF power to impose its own style of "economic discipline'' on the government's economic policies and the management of the economy. This has been borne out by the detailed assurances and commitments that R Venkataraman's letter of intent contains. Specific targets for deficit financing by the government, for its borrowing from the banking system and for similar other monetary and fiscal operations have been agreed to for the satisfaction of the IMF.

NEW DELHI Sixth Plan as Window-Dressing B M THE curtain on the monsoon session of Parliament was rung down appropriately by the declaration of the Prime Minister before the meeting of the uiling Congress (I) parliamentary party the day after the session concluded that corruption was a global phenomenon and therefore, by implication, that the rampant corruption in India spotlighted by the exposure of what is called the Antulay affair by the Opposition parties during the session of Parliament need not be taken seriously and could not be controlled or curbed. That inflation is a global phenomenon and nothing very much can be done about it has been a familiar contention of Indira Gandhi. She has now given a novel and wider dimension to her international perspective about which she is supposed to be very sensitive and for which she it often admired in many quarters.