The Hindu Business Line : No deficit of `deficit' in Budget

IF YOU were to search for `deficit' in Mr Laloo Prasad's maiden Railway Budget speech, you would not find it. Nor does it exist in the ``highlights of the Budget' put up in www.indianrailways.gov.in. Mr P. Chidambaram, however, may not enjoy the luxury of banishing the word. We have so much come to terms with deficit budgets that even the feel-good ``see-you-after-the-elections'' Interim Budget speech of Mr Jaswant Singh in February 2004 had more than half a dozen of deficit.

There is no unanimity in pronouncing the word. Oxford's A Dictionary of Modern English Usage by H. W. Fowler frowns on `diffi-sit'. OED prefers `deafi-cit' though `dee-fi-cit' is also common. Deficit rhymes with elicit, explicit, illicit, implicit, solicit and tacit. The word means deficiency in amount or quality, and an excess of expenditure over revenue. Origin from Latin deficit, it is wanting, third singular present indicative of deficere. In the balance of payments, or in any category of international transactions within it, "deficit is the sum of debits minus the sum of credits, or the negative of the surplus," explains Deardorff's Glossary of International Economics. Deficit financing, as Oxford Dictionary of Business would explain is "the creation of government budget deficit for the purpose of influencing economic activity." While you and I cannot pull on continuously with chronic deficits, running a government is a different ballgame.

Doctors too use this word, to mean lack or deficiency, as Dorlands Medical Dictionary explains: Thus, pulse deficit is the difference between heart rate and pulse rate in atrial fibrillation; and reversible ischemic neurologic deficit is RIND, take care. If you are inattentive having a hard time keeping your mind on one thing , check for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).

There could be enough deficits to distract when the FM earmarks big money for new schemes, and plugs in big numbers against the black-hole, so much so your own deficit would seem too insignificant to worry about.

There seems to be a deficit of literary usage of deficit, though I am able to find almost two dozen uses by Shakespeare of `wanting' and a smaller number of `lacking', the close synonyms. Romeo sings: "My life were better ended by their hate, Than death prorogued, wanting of thy love." With `deficit', it could be `death prorogued, with love in deficit'. Or, you might wish that, in King Henry VIII, Queen Katharine rather say, "You know I am a woman, wit in deficit," instead of how the bard put it: "You know I am a woman, lacking wit. " Well, if Laloo's tame Budget presentation is any indication, today's Budget may have one more deficit — of wit and humour, and of couplets and poems.

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