M Chuba Ao
National Vice President, BJP
In the last six decades since statehood in 1963, Nagaland's march has been spectacular in industrialising a primordial economy. In education, in power sector and in trade and commerce too, Nagaland has taken a quantum jump. Dimapur, our commercial capital, is one of the fastest growing hubs in eastern India.
The Budget 2023-24 has its own significance as it came immediately after the recently held assembly elections. The government headed by Chief Minister Neiphiu Rio needs to be complimented as the polls returned the NDPP-BJP alliance to power. The Budget presented by CM Rio, who holds the Finance portfolio, says there was a gradual increase in revenues in areas like State GST, which had increased from Rs 788.37 crore in 2019-20 to Rs 1,092.21 crore in 2021- 22. The revenue from the coal sector increased from Rs 53 lakh in 2019-20 to Rs 2.03 crore in 2021-22 and it has touched Rs 5 crore in the current financial year already.
The Chief Minister has mentioned that the forest sector too witnessed a jump in revenue collection from Rs 13.72 crore in 2019-20 to Rs 19.06 crore in 2021-22. These figures make one happy as the NDPP-BJP is able to streamline the state economy especially because all these have happened after Covid19 crisis. I agree with the chief minister that the State’s own revenue collection needs improvement.
At present it is accounted for only 12.36% of total revenue receipts and this was barely sufficient to meet the salary expenditure for two-and-a-half months. A foremost lesson in ensuring economic governance in today's world is adequate resource mobilisation. At the national level, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has given a vision of Atmanirbhar Bharat --
a self-reliant India. This is crucial even for a small state like Nagaland and other northeastern states.
I am of firm conviction that depending a lot on the central funding all the time is not advisable and for that there has to be right balancing in maintenance of salary and pension components. In Nagaland, today we have about 1.3 lakh state government employees and due to this about 65 percent of total money of the state goes into salaries and pensions. The number of government employees is one of the highest in the country and the government will do well to rationalise the expenditures on this sector.
Chief Minister Mr Rio is right when he said the unusually huge amount of resources the state spends on payment of salaries had been viewed critically by almost all the finance commissions. Over the five-year period from 2020-21 to 2025-26, the Revenue Deficit Grant would reduce by Rs 910 crore, adding that it appeared that the Finance Commission had taken this stand to pressurise the states to cut down revenue expenditure, especially on salaries.
The state government can think of a temporary ban in fresh appointments except for departments and services that is required urgently. The number of police force in the state is also huge and may be some rationalisation will be done on this front too.
For crucial appointments, the government should leave it to State Selection Board and UPSC routes. This will help bring down revenue expenditures. Moreover, this is an era of technology, knowledge and computers. So when a computer can do 10 people's job, it is always wise to embrace technology so that wasteful expenditures can be curtailed.
The Finance Ministry of the Government of India gave standing directives to all states to release all CSS in their accounts by July 20, 2022, on condition that the Centre would withdraw all the unutilised funds.
At that point of time, the Nagaland government held a total of Rs 728 crore in CSS funds, an amount so high that forced the state to withdraw funds from the Consolidated Sinking Fund to manage these releases. Of course, this had a salutary effect and one key positive outcome of this incident was that the Nagaland state Government was able to discharge almost all the backlog of CSS. The Chief Minister and his team in Finance ministry ought to be congratulated for this.
However, at this moment I feel the urgency to request the government to plan some alternative and innovative ways to boost employment. One methodology is to encourage entrepreneurship. If we do so, we can invest hardly Rs 3 lakh for a person and he can generate jobs for ten others. I say this because if a new appointment is made for a salary of Rs 30,000 per month, he gets Rs 3.6 lakh in 12 months and proportionally it increases every year.
In modern day governance, the government and policy makes should focus on framing policies and for encouraging entrepreneurship, we need to encourage potential talents. There are multiple sectors which can be tapped to push SMEs and small scale industries at various levels. On this issue, I also believe that the role of agriculture, animal farming and horticulture should be encouraged and made use of adequately in generating income.
As a senior leader of the BJP, I therefore take this opportunity to compliment Chief Minister Rio for presenting a tax free as well as a realistic budget. In terms of economic governance, it is time to think fresh.
