This will be the second budget of the same government. When the government came to power, none stated that the economy was in a good shape and there were no problems in the economy. The economy was in a bad shape throughout the last decade. But the BJP government added upon this in several ways. Firstly, in the 1998-99 budget, there was virtually no reflection of the crises of the Indian economy. A lot of promises were made, but without any budgetary provisions. This resulted in huge gaps in promise and procurements. Secondly, they went on to achieve the nuclearisation programme by effecting a nuclear blast in Pokhran. In a series of measures taken up by the government as apart of the damage control measure went against the development process of the Indian economies as these have implied some surrenders to the external forces. Thirdly the irresponsible act of the government has been a virtual leaking of the budget proposals in a meeting of the industrialists by the Finance Minister himself. In a meeting of FICCI, Finance Minister himself admitted that he will lower import duties in the next budget. This is indicating the helplessness of the government who is pleading for support to the industrialists of the country. The government should keep in mind the expectations and speculative activity which have been ruling our country for the last few years. The announcement of the Finance Minister will set expectations of businessmen climbing and will eventually settle in rising prices on competing goods as well as planning exports on a super higher scale. Thus without solving the issues, it is the government who has taken initiative to make the crises deeper.

The result of the efforts can be looked in a glance as follows. It was declared that the revenue deficit of the country has gone up by 300% during the period April---December 1998 to R. 36408 crores compared to the same period during the last year. The receipts of the government are showing poor figures. The collection of excise duties grew only by 7%, whereas the targets were 21%. The collection of customs duties rose by 8% whereas the targets were 17%. Fiscal deficit has touched 6.6% of GDP, which is considered to be high for the developing countries. The promise was to contain it within 5%. The situation turned worse with the government taking certain panicky steps to tackle the problems in a short-term method.

One such method was to raise the administered prices of the commodities distributed through the public distribution system. This was slightly modified due to tremendous protest from the people of the country. However none would deny the fact that the present regime has been one of the most inflationary regimes in our country. This has also been one of the regimes, which recorded low growth rates of production in agriculture, industry and also foreign direct investment. The recorded rate of growth in GDP has been 4.5 % in spite of the Planning Commission as well as the government's high projection and optimism of 7% rate of growth. The rate of growth of agriculture was 1.2% and the industrial rate of growth was 4%. Inflation rose by more than 7% and balance of payments deficit went up to 2.6% of GDP in the current account, which was much higher than that in the previous years. Again, evidence is showing that the government is borrowing more than it can meet to make both ends meet. But who will bear the interest burden? A massive drive has been given to privatise the economy through disinvestment programme. The importance of this programme in meeting the budgetary deficit was not hidden from the people as the Prime Minister himself took charge of the disinvestment drive. But if the money from disinvestment goes directly to finance the deficit, one is not living in a healthy economy.