Austerity only for officials

Faced with a widening fiscal deficit, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee has announced that the government would resort to “unpopular” measures, i.e., ‘austerity measures’. Foreign travel is a much envied aspect of a ministerial portfolio and the finance ministry has decided to curb that along with a slew of other steps such as purchase of vehicles, except for defence forces, and holding meetings and seminars in five-star hotels.

An internal memorandum of the finance ministry has directed officials to discontinue the practice of sending more than one official to attend overseas conferences and seminars. It asked the officials to rely on officials from the local embassy to strengthen participation in these conferences and seminars.

Even as the government announced such austerity measures, Business Standard takes a look at some of the foreign visits that Cabinet ministers will be making in the next few weeks.

Urban Development Minister Kamal Nath is travelling to Tokyo this week, as part of the CII delegation to celebrate 60 years of diplomatic relations between India and Japan.

Nath will inaugurate the business roundtable at Tokyo, co-hosted by CII and its Japanese partner, Keidanren.

Environment Minister Jayanthi Natarajan is travelling to Rio De Janeiro for the Earth Summit, scheduled from June 20 to June 22.

HRD and Telecom Minister Kapil Sibal is scheduled to visit the US for a week next month — a trip on which he will combine work related to both his ministries.

Civil Aviation Minister Ajit Singh is headed to the USA to take possession of the Dreamliner aircraft.

Commerce Minister Anand Sharma will be travelling to Brussels in June for the EU-India negotiations on FTA.

Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar will be visiting New Zealand and England in the next few weeks.

Petroleum Minister Jaipal Reddy is slated to go to Turkmenistan in connection with the signing of the TAPI pipeline agreement

Those who have no immediate travel plans include Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, I&B Minister Ambika Soni, Home Minister P Chidamabaram, among others.

Significantly, austerity measures were earlier announced in September 2009 for a year, as the economy was grappling with a drought. The austerity measures included travelling economy class on domestic flights by ministers and government officials.

That travelling economy class doesn’t go down well with our ministers was amply exhibited when the then MoS for External Affairs Shashi Tharoor tweeted about travelling “cattle class”. His tweet, “Absolutely, in cattle class out of solidarity with all our holy cows!” invited much criticism. With even Congress President Sonia Gandhi advocating and travelling economy class, Tharoor was compelled to apologise for his comment.