Budgeting

Before I started working for NDDB some years ago, the idea of Budgeting was a fascinating one for me. The only budget I had known till then was the National Budget presented by the Finance Minister in Delhi. Those were the days of total Government control over economy and hence, many policy decisions were announced in the budget. I used to wonder how can one person or a small group of people plan the incomes and expenditures for the entire country's economy.

But, during the last 10 years, hardly a month passes by without me getting involved in budgeting for something. And, things have gone past lakhs and are frequently reaching the crore mark. Gone are the days of indecisiveness, 'how can we plan what will happen tomorrow?'. Why tomorrow, these days, I am involved in making plans for the next five years also!

Recently, made a plan on how many meetings will be held during August 2012 and in which village. Not only that, how many people will participate in that meeting, how many men and how many women, what will be travel cost to reach Gudalur that time (assuming a diesel charge and fuel efficiency of the Government vehicles), and the cost of one vada and three idlis (inherently assuming the cost of rice and dhal and oil). It is just child's play. The only thing to worry is whether we will get the money or not.


Budgeting is not at all a problem now. If, by chance, this budget gets sanctioned, then the actual problem starts. How to spend that money. More importantly, how to explain why it was not spent and what creative explanations can be given to convince the donors.

The donors are also becoming totally crazy. From six monthly reports, we have come down to even monthly reports. This leaves very little elbow room to manoeuvre and hence the explanations also need to be extra creative. "We budgeted to spend Rs.10000 on this meeting, but suddenly floods came and all the participants were swept away. So, we could not spend the money". Or, sometimes, "the children camp could not be held, as most of the children suddenly became adults and participated in a youth camp instead".

Churchill seems to have remarked once, "A good strategist is a person who takes into account all the eventualities, but more importantly, s/he should be able to explain why something did not happen the way it was planned". We need such strategists these days to run our organisations and answer the donors!