Shoddy edits on the Budget

BY Darius Nakhoonwala| IN Opinion | 02/03/2008

You don¿t say! 

Darius Nakhoonwala

In the good old days, budgets used to be presented at 5 pm. There was no Internet, or even TV, and leader writers had to depend on the office peon to fetch the budget papers at about 7.45 pm. The edit page had to be ready by 10 pm which means the poor writer had an hour to assimilate and write his comment. For business papers the deadline was a bit longer but not much.

Then a few years ago, the budget presentation time became 11 am, Internet had arrived, TV was in full flow and the budget papers reached the leader writers by 2 pm. The deadline remained about the same.

So: have the budget edits improved? Amazingly, not even by a bit. As the edits on the 2008-09 budget, presented two days ago show, all of them said exactly the same things, a sure sign of laziness, not to mention the general devaluation of editorial comment.

To be sure, the populism and elections part needed to be pointed out but did even the business papers have to do such a cursory job on their edit? The editors owe the readers an explanation.

A part of the problem, I think, is that so many of them waste time being seen on TV – who ever hears what is said? – instead of poring over the documents like the old timers used to. True, the documents of this budget may not have yielded much. But believe me, if you look, there is always something and I think no one looked this time. Everyone just sounded off on the populism-election thing.  

And the Economic Times did not even write an edit while Mint wrote 200 words for its Quick Edit on page 1.  The general newspapers did a better job of it, at least to the extent that all of them wrote. The contents were another matter altogether. Like I said all made the same point, most of them angrily --which was the other thing to stand out. Why get so upset?

What this shows, I think, is a complete disconnect between the economic opinion makers and the general public which seems mighty pleased about the budget. Even very good economists with no axe to grind have praised the loan waiver. That might a bit over the top but the fact remains why get angry, especially when you knew that a populist budget was coming?

The Business Standard seemed to realize its initial error and made up for it the next day – on Sunday, March 2 – with an edit that went beyond the immediate issue. It linked populism to rapid economic growth in a causal way. "The question of populism has to be viewed, apart from its usual electoral-cum-popularity context, in a different way… in democracies, populism is a consequence not just of electoral jostling but also, more significantly, of phases of high economic growth. Could it be that the latter, because it necessarily involves a worsening of income distribution invariably leads to populism? The political problem that arises from increasing income inequality can only be addressed by politicians by direct methods." This was the only attempt to get at a larger context for populism.

For the sake of record let me quote what some of the others said:

Business Line was its usual quiet self. "The Budget is not a pastiche of expedients motivated by the contingencies of individual stakeholders. Every allocation is accounted for by the Budget — except the Rs 60,000 crore of debt waiver. Neither in his speech nor in the press conference later did the Finance Minister elaborate where the money is to come from, apart from asserting that he would find it. That is an unnecessary mystery and mars an otherwise noble effort."

Business Standard sounded incensed. "It is a political budget from start to finish. And so a government led by economists and economic reformers has ended up bowing to political considerations and implementing over five years programmes that they may not believe in, but which they have to introduce and then find reasons to support. When a government led by such notables writes off Rs 60,000 crore of bank money, or 3 per cent of all bank loans, it is as well to remember the harsh words hurled at Devi Lal when he did the same; but since he was an unlettered kulak, he could be safely abused. The truth is that while farmers have been in distress, writing off loans makes every farmer who repaid his loan feel like a fool. What does that do to credit discipline? Also, the write-off does not end rural indebtedness because farmers owe more money to moneylenders. And if they got into financial trouble because farming does not pay enough, then the debt write-off is only a palliative and does not solve the underlying problem." Such anger? Why?

The Telegraph wrote a balanced edit, as did the Hindu and the rest. The Indian Express, which these days thinks monetary policy is the be-all and end-all of economic policy, said the RBI needed to cut rates – after fulminating about the loan waiver.

All in all, a shoddy effort by all. For shame.