The auditor's report on how West Bengal spent its money has been lying dormant for four successive years. It was the state's officials who had it. That was what the Governor had requested. It was never witnessed by the public. But that's about to change and could not be more on the money.

In the past four years, the previous government has kept off the table four reports of the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) and the new government in Kolkata is now preparing to present these reports to the Assembly in 2021-22, 2022-23, 2023-24 and 2024-25. The previous CAG report which the state tabled formally was 2020-21. All this has been deferred even after the incumbent of the Raj Bhavan then wanted the files to be put before the legislators. What's important here is that an audit report in India is not a public document until it is tabled by the government of the day before the legislature. If refused, then the audit never comes up. A senior official at the finance department said as much to the press: "The logic was that the reports always pointed out questionable practices, that earlier the government didn't like what those reports had in them and so they remained in the drawer.

The truth is in those drawers and it's not about any one scandal, it's about money that can't be accounted for. In the course of audits conducted between 2011 and 2020, the CAG reported approximately ₹2.29 lakh crore of grants from the Centre that were never accompanied by utilisation certificates with the state. The certificate is a standard, utilitarian document: when a department gets a grant, the grantee is supposed to certify within a year that the funds were used properly. When that paper doesn't return, the working assumption of the auditors, which they state in the reports, is that the money wasn't spent correctly, or the funds were even directed elsewhere. The majority of the gap in the 2020-21 report are the three departments. The Panchayat and Rural Development Department alone accounted for almost ₹81,839 crore worth of missing certificates with a number of 81,996. School Education came next with some ₹36,850 crore of certificates and Urban Development and Municipal Affairs with some ₹30,693 crore. They are the arteries of rural welfare, classrooms and city governance exactly where the money is most difficult to trace after it gets out of the treasury.

A second one is there, quieter, but telling. There are abstract contingent bills which governments draw emergency funds for floods, erosion, drought etc. The rule is that a detailed bill detailing that spending must follow within sixty days. As on March 2021, over 11,000 of these detailed bills, totaled at about ₹3,400 crore, had not been filed. The auditor's use of language for this was harsh: bills of this sort are a red flag for accounting misconduct and a permanent risk of fraud, the temporary diversion and embezzlement of funds. All this is not a belief. A CAG report "flags" but does not "sentence. Yet it was the nearest thing a citizen had to an unbiased reading of the books and for four years was that reading denied.

The documents are inextricably bound up in the politics of their tabling. The government now in power in Kolkata is the first time that the Bharatiya Janata Party has ever formed a government in the state and April results were not predicted on such a vast scale (207 out of 294 seats on a 46 per cent vote as compared to 80 seats and 41 per cent for the Trinamool Congress). But it was the almost exact opposite of 2021. The Chief Minister presiding at the tabling is the one who defeated the preceding Chief Minister in her constituency. It would be naïve not to say it is a housekeeping move for the release of these reports. The party that campaigned on the issue of corruption is the one that is releasing audits, while the party that suppressed the audits is the party that implicate. The instrument is constitutionalised. Clearly a political motivation. It's all true at the same time.

It's there that a sober reading must settle in. The tabling of the case is not based on which party is benefiting. It is based on the principle that an audit paid for by public funding and created by a constitutional body should be in the public records and not in the government's pocket. Such a big welfare state as Bengal can't demand any trust in its cash transfer and refuse to demonstrate how the earlier rounds of cash transfer were spent. The embarrassment of a defeated administration is no justification for continuing to bury them. If anything the greater fact is the four years of suppression, to demonstrate the ease with which machinery of accountability can be turned off by any man who has the keys to the order paper of the legislature. The lesson has a cross-cutting nature in all directions. That same machinery now belongs to a new government and what will be the test of its seriousness is whether it is as keen to put its own future audits before the Public Accounts Committee as it was to ridicule the predecessor's.

All this is put into perspective by the economic backdrop. This week's budget is of ₹4.38 lakh crore, which is almost eight per cent higher than the ₹4.06 lakh crore budgeted by the outgoing government for February's vote-on-account. The new government has taken over a debt mountain of approximately ₹8.15 lakh crore, and is seeking to wear multiple hats simultaneously the one of a spender and discipliner. The numbers look right on paper: the revenue deficit is forecast to be just over one per cent of state production against more than two per cent previous year; the fiscal deficit to be at 2.91 per cent against 3.40 per cent; and the debt stock to ease marginally to around 38 per cent of the economy. Welfare has not been abolished, it has been rebranded and in some instances, restricted. The flagship cash scheme will now be called as such and the amount increased to ₹36,000 crore, but the number of beneficiaries will be reduced from 2.4 crore to approximately one crore. The star attraction was the remuneration package, where the dearness allowance was raised by twenty points to 38 per cent, ending one of the long-standing grievance against the old regime, and a pledge of one lakh jobs in the government.

But read the numbers department by department and the budget is a political map. Minority Affairs and Madrasah Education saw steep reductions in funding from ₹5,713 crore to ₹2,165 crore a move that was bound to be interpreted as being more than just numerical. The expenditure of the new government is going to the regions that helped it sweep to power: that of North Bengal has increased by almost double to ₹1,821 crore, and the amount allocated for the western tribal belt has also close to doubled. Industry and Commerce more than doubled, IT spending doubled, and even the dangling possibility of a deep sea port, a greenfield airport, metro lines and a review of old urban land ceiling rules the vocabulary of a state looking to shake off its reputation for industrial drift. Notably, agriculture was cut back. Such a budget is a thesis on the state's belonging if it resembles this.

None of this is unique to Bengal, which is part of the point, if it's set against a wide frame. From Eastern Europe to South Asia, wherever institutions are supposed to be beyond politics, they become embroiled in it, as audit findings are withheld, investigative agencies are selectively deployed, and the budget serves as a reward map for loyal geographies. The CAG is also a strong institution by design, based on a tradition of independent public audit, but, of course, as strong as a legislature's willingness to stand before it. A report that is tabled but not debated on the Public Accounts Committee only takes accountability a few steps forward from a report stored in a drawer; a report that is tabled and is used only as a campaign talking point as far as accountability goes. The more tedious, less rewarding labor of line-by-line review, of the retrieval of improperly used tens of millions, of the correction of systems that failed to make the cut-off for filing certificates for 10 years that often doesn't get played up on the front page.

It is also helpful to recall the extent of the ground change that has occurred around the party in the dock. The Trinamool Congress isn't just out of power, it's falling apart. Most of its members of parliament have been swayed over to the ruling alliance, the majority of its new MPs defied party leadership and appointed a rival second-in-command, its bank accounts have been frozen and the party's second-in-command has been summoned to appear before investigators, who have also searched the Assembly for forged signatures. Such a party will have a difficult time presenting a coherent defence when the audits arrive, although its underlying claim (victor's accountability selective) is not without merit, and should be heard.

So reports will be tabled, figures quoted, and headlines will write themselves. The next big question comes the following day: will Bengal's new masters make it their standard to live up to, or will they use it as a club to beat a former rival? The answer is the crucial one that determines if there's a change of government or not, and a change in how the state is actually run.