MGP also known as Mysore Grahachar Parishat and in recent days as Mysore Galata Parishat has been among other things taken up the issue of Corporation budget and finance seriously.

There is not one thing one can talk good about the whole process of developing this budget. There is very little computerisation. When it is difficult find any major institution following single entry book keeping today in our city , our corporation is still following that antiquated system. There is very little analysis provided in the budget submission. The only salient point is that it always shows a small surplus. This is only because it is mandated by law and the corporation in this case decided that they would comply with it unlike in many other cases where it ignores such niceties.

When I compared the budget numbers for 2005/06 versus the actuals for 97/98, it shows that the total funds available to the corporation have gone up from Rs 29 crores to Rs 90 crores. This is a good sign. But is this enough to meet the increasing civic needs of the city? We would never know from the budget submission. When I compared the per capita funds spent by the corporation, it has also gone up and in real terms shows some minor improvement.

However even a cursory look at the budget shows that corporation has failed to raise enough resources to take care of the increasing needs of the city.

Revenue of water department (referred to as water tax in old lingo) has gone up from Rs 5.22 crores to Rs 10..72 crores for 2003/04. It has been budgeted to go up for the next two years. We still do not have the actuals for these two periods. It is expected to go up 100%. This is indeed promising. But we do not know if this is enough or we are charged more. Most of the increase seems to be coming from collecting more from industry. When we met the head of finance and asked him what is the profit and loss of water supply and what is the total cost of supplying 1000 liters of water, he point blank answered one should not worry about such details. Corporation is not supposed to make any profit from supplying water and so there is no need to know the cost of supplying water. Also if one takes enough efforts, from the budget it is possible to find the cost incurred by Vani Vilas Water Works. What a convincing answer. It is shameful that not one of our learned corporators has found it important to find this kind of minimum information on water supply.

Property tax has also gone up from Rs. 4.9 crores in 97/98 to Rs 12 crores in 2003/04 and is expected to go down slightly in 2004/05 and go up by 15% for 2005/06. This is rather surprising considering more houses being built during these two years and also tax collection drive was supposed to be vigorous.

Funds available for maintenance does not appear to be sufficient.

Expendittures on office and establishment has gone up substantially.. On one hand this is to be expected. But is there a commensurate improvement in services offered by the corporation?

Not enough provision has been made to service the ADB loan. It was only at the level of 8 crores in 2004/05 and Rs 9.25 crores in 2005/06. Both these numbers do not match what the commisioner has announced as the payment of ADB loan.

In short last years' budget raises a number of questions. In the past but for some efforts by MGP to understand the budget, there has been very little attempt made to participate in the budget process. When there were progressive commissioners, MGP has interacted more with them in the process of budget process and has lent assistance to computerise it. However because of frequent transfers of these competent commissioners, it has been difficult to get any lasting improvement.

Can we expect more involvement from concerned citizens and especially from our elected representatives in this year's budget?