Manohar Parrikar seems to be on a different kind of a mission, a personal one, to eradicate the last two years as if they didn’t happen and pick up from where he left off, suddenly in November. His manner of speech and deportment, during his budget presentation, was of a man who had left home and was returning back to a house which needs  a revamp and a restoration. And he needs to do that with half of his old family and family members gone, having to eke out a new political life with strange bedfellows.

The only way in which Parrikar can couch this compromise- because that is exactly what it is- is by making development his solo gig, pushing critical bread and butter issues in front, hoping that the governance will heal the scars of the tumultuous government formation. He is making new promises, again in the hope that his time of assessment will start now and the shared past of Parrikar and Parsekar, which reduced them to 13, will be a footnote and replaced by a new version of coalition governance, which though hybrid, will deliver.

While this was a budget presentation, Parrikar used it to make his opening remarks about his governance plan. While judgment should be reserved till he begins to deliver on this plan, or the weight of compulsions slow him down, he has focused on health, education, social welfare, infrastructure, industry and growth as a big ticket push package, while trying to go after the festering wounds and eye sores like a blow torch- corruption, garbage, the decay in the cooperative sector. On corruption, insiders in his camp, reveal that corruption charges, scandals and scams in the previous BJP’s government’s term is indeed a sore point with him. The announcement of a Special squad of the vigilance department to speed up investigations is a sign of impatience and a desperation to respond to criticism that his zero tolerance to corruption mantra as flouted with impunity, when Goa was not under his watch, didn’t work like a charm that was expected.

But as he embarked on a fiscal journey to extract Goa from its financial morass, he chose to spend more to do more - Rs 978-odd crores in social welfare, turning around education at par with international bench marks, funding for treating burns in GMC, a rehabilitation center for beggars, old age homes for new age diseases, completing the South Goa district hospital which has remained like a still born, for over two years now etc. The quintessential survival question that he needs to answer is this: Where will the money come from? To this he publicly said “Leave it to me”, expecting Goans to go on a blind faith date with him for the next couple of years, at least.

He is pinning a lot of hope on GST expected to generate additional revenue of Rs 1500 crores. His revenue from service tax stands at Rs 1600 crores at 14 percent and with GST at 18 percent it will go upto Rs 2200 crores.  Then with the hike in VAT on petrol,  Rs 60-70 crores of additional funds will arrive.

 Currently the state’s share of central taxes and grants in aid stands at  Rs 3224.61 crores accounting for nearly 22.40% of the state’s net present budget, Parrikar said in the Assembly on Friday.

There is a great deal of expectation around not just getting old pending funds back into the treasury but of getting a new cash injection. Manohar Parrikar, can, has and will balance the numbers.

But whether he will be able to balance people’s aspirations, expectations and also angst, is his bigger political challenge. But his biggest one is coalition accountability, not accounts. He must not just take his coalition partners along, but help them battle adverse public opinion and move on to govern.