Estimates In The Legislatures

The word “budget” has been frequently used in the preceding chapter. In view of its importance it is desirable to attach precise meaning to it. In spite of the fact that the word is in common use there is no general agreement regarding its exact significance. Henry Higgs defines it as an estimated balance sheet of revenue and expenditure of the financial year. ³⁶ In the Government of India Act, the Indian Budget has been referred to as the estimated revenue and expenditure of the Governor-General in Council. ³⁷ An American writer describes it as the whole scheme of national finance and takes it to mean as the arrangement according to which money is asked for by the Government, voted by the Legislature, spent by the Executive, and controlled by an agency independent of the Executive who submit a report regarding the expenditure to the fund-granting authority. It may be stated with asurance that the budget is not merely an estimate of revenue and expenditure. That is not the sense in which it is commonly used. Budget, if it is merely an estimate, would not be, as Willoughby puts it, “the master problem of our public administration.” ³⁸ The rôle which this word has played in the constitutional history of democratic countries suggests a great deal more. An estimate can be prepared by an agent of an enlightened despot for the information of the latter in order that there may be some method about the manner in which money is raised and spent in his domain. That is the object with which the estimates are still prepared in some of our leading Native States, and though these estimates are called the budgets they can bear that name only by courtesy. On the other hand, if the budget is given very wide significance and made identical with the whole range of financial operations beginning with the preparation of estimates and ending with the audit of accounts, it will result in confusion of thought and practice. It is customary to speak of preparing the budget, voting the budget, executing the budget, but it is a very loose use of the word. The budget is essentially an instrument of popular government by which the responsibility of the Executive to the Legislature is enforced. It is a document of information with which the Executive comes before the Legislature, gives an account of its stewardship during the expiring year, and lays before it its plans for the coming one. It is, to quote Willoughby again, “at once a report, an estimate, and a proposal.” It forms the basis of the financial legislation of the coming year. The contents of the budget are determined by the supreme need of placing before the Legislature the full information about the financial events of the past year, giving it an opportunity of bringing the public administration of the year under review, and on the basis of this information approving or disapproving the programme of the year to come. A word, which originally is said to have meant only a leather bag, has, on account of the historical evolution, come to have a meaning all its own. It is an integral part of the system by which the general will of the nation impresses itself on the conduct of the national affairs.