Reading the salient features of the budget on Saturday morning, I could not stand to watch live coverage of one of the most vulgar fracases that ever took place on the floor of the House among the parliamentarians, the supposed symbols of collective morality and personal civility. The first question that hit my mind was this: if the budget means number crunching, untenable pledges and rhetorical exuberance, then why indulge in this hugely absurd exercise?
Take out the finance bills of the last umpteen years, before the secession of an economically-aggrieved East Pakistan, after the hanging of prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, or after a number of military and civilian governments that came and went. You will find an abiding fidelity of all the rulers to roughly the same old blueprint of budgetary allocations: 30 percent defence, 30 percent debt repayment/servicing, 20 percent civil administration, and only 20 percent on the social and economic sector.
Of the last category, often the end figure is much less than what was originally allocated. On the contrary, defence and civil administration invariably receive the amount exceeding the original figures. During the last two years, Rs 100 to 150 billion have been taken out of the developmental outlay to pay for the counterinsurgency operations in FATA. General Musharraf quietly but using the parliamentary rubber stamp, transferred a huge sum of Rs 40 billion of the pension fund for defence personal to the civilian kitty.
Like the previous years, this year’s defence budget also saw a ten percent increase; why did that happen given the financial crunch? Because the Indian defence budget has also been increased by more than 30 percent during the last two years would come the answer from the proponents of the defence hike. I wish expenses on the social and infrastructural development were also compared to that of the Indians, in addition to considering India’s tax-to-GDP ratio, FDIs, foreign exchange reserves, the volume of international trade. Let us also include our ‘friend’ China, and such other imperatives of economic development as institutional stability and partnership with the global corporate, industrial, cultural and political players.
Notwithstanding the appreciable Benazir Income Programme and the job opportunities offered to the educated youth through paid internships, the new budget falls far short of alleviating the miserable lot of the common man, the passive victim of the rapacious and myopic propertied, business, political and state elites. Despite an expected shortfall of Rs 1.2 trillion, the ‘powerful lobbies’, about which the finance minister has been moaning — agricultural, real estate, stock brokers, service providers, wholesalers, retailers — would continue to remain out of the taxman’s reach.
Hence, these classes would continue to enjoy special and parasitic privileges in a country that has a 50 percent illiteracy rate, and almost 70 percent poverty ranging from the very poor, the poor to the ever hard-up middle classes. Not so surprisingly, the finance bill contains an amnesty for the tax evaders if they invest their stolen money in the capital markets. Almost every decade, a tax amnesty has legitimised a new class of scavenging nouveau riche that has risen through tax evasion, corruption, rent seeking, and a myriad of rackets. Yet, the amnesty schemes have failed to achieve the purported goal: broadening of the tax-net and enhancement of revenue.
As a result, the country presents a schizophrenic countenance. On the one hand are the legions of despondent faces visible on the roads, offices, farms and markets. These victims of a six-decade-long cruel socio-economic order are increasingly losing hope in the country’s will, if not capacity, to better their lives. On the other hand are the beneficiaries of this skewed economic order that is churning out billionaires. They are immune to accountability and beyond the grasp of the law. They get away with all kinds of felonies — stealing public funds, cartelising, smuggling, under-invoicing, overpricing, hoarding, racketeering and buying off the taxman.
During the Musharraf regime, the stock markets crashed twice, causing losses upwards of Rs 1,000 billion. Most of the victims were small and gullible investors and the greedy and unscrupulous manipulators of the stock markets made most of the gains. Yet not a single head was rolled; indeed, the same manipulators found favour with this government. Likewise, a host of cement, sugar and wheat cartels was formed to exploit the unregulated markets, causing an artificial dearth of commodities and earning billions of rupees from inflated prices.
Appallingly, thousands of containers containing goods (and arms) worth billions of rupees were stolen under the garb of the so-called Afghan transit, and thousands of acres of provincial land in Karachi was procured on nominal rates by the defence authorities to develop their housing schemes along the strategic Super Highway in Karachi. But so far no individual, group, or powerful institution has been dragged into the dock. Ironically, the PPP-government has turned the Musharraf-era’s malpractices into an art, if not a science, particularly in Sindh, the PPP’s popular base.
Corruption is so rampant in the public sector of the Sindh government that the public functionaries are perceived more as ‘commission agents’ than custodians of public funds. Whether it is transfers, postings, promotions, contracts, development, or allocation of funds, everything and everyone is perceived to have become a purchasable commodity.
A result of commoditisation of public office is that the provincial government has been able to spend only 54 percent of its annual development fund during the outgoing financial year. The reason is the high cost of rent-seeking that makes the performance of contracts and completion of public works almost impossible. As a result, the social and physical infrastructure is in shambles, the common person’s economic and security realities are horrible.
How tragic that everywhere elected governments infuse new verve and hope among people through budgets while our rulers continue to commit a trickery that they call the budget in order to con the common people with sops and rhetoric, and to protect the rich and powerful interests. Then they also expect the people to vote them in, again!
The writer is a lawyer and academic and can be reached at [email protected]