Why borrow when we already have Rs 98.18 trillion?

"The Lok Sabha on Wednesday passed a bill allowing the central government to withdraw Rs 98.18 lakh crore (Rs 98.18 trillion) from consolidated fund to meet its expenditure during 2019-20." The Consolidated Fund is where "All revenues received by the government by way of direct taxes and indirect taxes, money borrowed and receipts from loans given by the government flow into the Consolidated Fund of India" and "All government expenditure is made from this fund, except exceptional items which are made from the Contingency Fund or the Public Account." In the Budget, presented on 5 July, the total expenditure for this financial year is expected to be Rs 27,86,349 crore, which is Rs 27.863 trillion, but the government intends to withdraw more than 3 times the amount from the Consolidate Fund. Why? Where is the money coming from? And, if it has so much money why is it forcing the Reserve Bank (RBI) to hand over its reserves? A committee chaired by former governor of the RBI Bimal Jalan is to present a report on how and how much of the reserves held by the RBI is to be transferred to the government to plug the growing hole in its revenues. "While currency and gold revaluation reserves of RBI have more than tripled to Rs 6.92 trillion in 2017-18 from Rs 1.99 trillion in 2008-09, the contingency fund has grown 50% during the same period to Rs 2.32 trillion." This is small change compared to the humongous Rs 98.18 trillion the government is taking from the Consolidated Fund. While the RBI has $498 billion in documented assets it also has 'invisible' liabilities of $363 billion, wrote A Mukherjee, and it cannot shrink its reserves without shrinking its liabilities. That can cause a "cataclysmic deflationary shock" to the economy. Even raiding the RBI is not enough. "The Indian government has plans to raise as much as 3.25 trillion rupees ($47.4 billion) in the next five years by reducing its stakes in some large state-owned firms to 40 percent, two senior government officers told Reuters, in the nation's biggest privatisation push in two decades." Still not enough. "India plans to raise $10 billion from its first overseas sovereign bond because there is a huge appetite for its debt in the foreign market, according to a top finance ministry official." That is precisely the reason why we should not borrow in dollars, said former governor of the RBI Raghuram Rajan. It is much better to let foreign investors buy government bonds in India, because then our debt is in rupees. Nonsense, wrote R Jagannathan, "RBI data shows that nearly $260 billion of portfolio money is invested in stocks and debt, and if this money decides to flee, it can rock the foreign markets." Which means that since we are already neck deep in ordure a little bit more doesn't matter. Why, when the government has Rs 98.18 trillion? How little we Indians know of our nation.