Austerity doesn’t mean no luxury, waffles Pranab

After his call for greater austerity raised hackles among his cabinet colleagues, finance minister Pranab Mukherjee on Friday sought to play down the issue, saying he did not mean that no five-star hospitality should be shown to visiting dignitaries.

The austerity suggested measures included travelling economy class on domestic flights and business class on international flights. However, ministers protested that travelling economy would deprive them of privacy and working space. Some reportedly even pointed out that they could not fit into economy seats!

Calls for austerity are not new; in fact they have been a part of Indian politics since before independence. But it is somewhat of an eye-opener that ministers are no longer willing to pay even lip-service to cutting down their personal demands on the exchequer.

Perhaps seeking to lead by example, Mukherjee intends to travel to Kolkata by a budget airline on Saturday. Not to be outdone, power minister Sushilkumar Shinde said he was flying economy to Delhi from Mumbai.

Speaking at an Indian Women Press Corps function, Mukherjee said he had asked the Lok Sabha speaker and the Rajya Sabha chairman to request MPs to follow some "simple" rules – apart from travel, conferences in hotels should be avoided, particularly since many government entities had "excellent" conference facilities. "But that does not mean lunch or dinner should not be held in hotels for visiting dignitaries," he said.

Mukherjee said many of the measures he had suggested were in fact statutory instructions which had fallen into abeyance. "We were not enforcing them earlier because our situation was comfortable. I have suggested that in domestic services, you should try to avoid (travelling executive class) because the distances are not far. As far as international flights are concerned, they can travel executive class instead of first class," Mukherjee said.