Shareholders have started demanding for good corporate governance. It is high time the citizens who pay the taxes and elect in representatives also demand good governance and sufficient disclosures about how they are managing the government affairs. The `annual budget' has become a mere accounting exercise. A lot of deliberations are taking place about "Governance in Corporate world". Government is busy in framing various regulations to enable the stakeholders know how the corporate entities are managed. But what about the governance in government itself? What is the mechanism to check whether the government is doing the job it is entrusted to? How to know what has been achieved out of the taxes and borrowings collected by the government during the previous year? Presently, we do not have any means to know about these matters. The five-year plans are too incomprehensible to the common person. And the annual budget presentation looks like an accounting exercise.

Take a look at the budget presented on February 4, 2004. It announces: "GDP expected to be over 8%, inflation to be upto 4.5%, imports allowed upto Rs. 25,000 without any duty, govt. employees to benefit because of clubbing the DA allowances with the basic salaries, fiscal deficit of 4.4% projected for 04-05 as against 4.8% budgeted for 03-04, Rs. 291,000 cr to be collected from revenue receipts, Rs. 167,000 cr to be collected from capital receipts, Rs. 322 to be spent on non-plan expenditure, fiscal deficit likely to increase to Rs. 136,000 cr and so on" The regular budgets are no different at all.