BUDGET time is here again, with unending discussions of money in amounts most of us cannot fathom. Numbers amounting to billions and arabs — not to be mistaken for the Saudi visitors we have been waiting for — will be thrown about, along with incomprehensible English phrases, such as ‘primary deficits’, ‘slippages’ and’ base charges’. It will make about as much sense to most of us as a conversation in a foreign language.
Indeed, even though the economy is a critical issue, discussions about it involve a select few who are not really interested in communicating with the people. Let me confess that I too number among not the economic experts but the clueless masses who cannot grasp the stuff that economies are made of, especially in the land of the pure.
Consider the state of the economy, which is more fragile than the civil-military relationship. Yet every political party, which has ruled in the recent past, claims to have brought it back from disaster and default. If this is success, I wonder what failure looks like.
Indeed, other than having a finance minister who says the IMF is unavoidable, little else has changed. The constants in terms of our ‘solutions’ have been around well after 2018. We continue to look for manna to drop from the heavens to bail us out. This manna, for as long as I can remember, continues to be an injection of foreign funds. If earlier it was in the shape of foreign aid and development for the........