Decoding the Structure of India's Union Budget

In the run up to 86th Union Budget of India (including interim budgets) presented in Feb 2016, this is a modest attempt to study and understand the structure of government accounts both on the revenue and expenditure side. The Constitution of India has clearly laid down the entire procedure for preparing the Union Budget and recording all the events both on the account of revenue and expenditure. The paper attempts to study the entire process of preparing a Budget in detail. It also studies the method of recording transactions under various major and minor heads. Deficit calculation is an integral part of government Budgets in developing countries. The paper concludes with the discussion on methods and types of Budget Deficits.