Assam budget goes digital, to be streamed on social media

GUWAHATI: In a first for Assam, the budget will be presented in the electronic format by finance minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Monday. This unique digital budget will also be the first one in the country to be drafted with citizens' participation and streamed on social media.
This is the BJP-led government's second budget.

"Andhra Pradesh was the first state to introduce e-budget, but it was limited to the legislators - who got the budget documents on tablets - and was not in the public domain. We are going beyond that. For the first time in the country, the proceedings of the budget presentation will go live on Twitter and Facebook," Sarma said.

Andhra had moved to the digital format in 2016.

Like legislators in Andhra Pradesh, Assam MLAs will also get the documents on a tablet. Media will be provided with the papers in an 8GB USB drive. "For citizens who are on the move and may not have the time to watch the live-stream on TV or social media, the budget will be available on the Google app," Sarma said.

To reach out to those who do not have access to digital formats, the finance department will bring out the entire budget in newspapers the following day.

"We will have a budget that is citizen-centric. We had sought suggestions from the people and our team had visited 40 academic institutes and 17 districts. We have received about 1,000 suggestions and incorporated them in the budget as much as possible," Sarma said.

The process for collection suggestions, also a first, had been going on for the past few months. Sarma said most suggestions revolved around urban issues - drainage, artificial floods and electricity - followed by the education sector and environmental issues.

This year's budget will be in four parts - gender budgeting, child budget, outcome budget (assessment of the progress in implementing the previous budget's proposals) and a statement on substantial development goals - besides the conventional budget speech and budgetary documents of departments.