Editorial
National budget: accounting
over accountability
THE budget proposed by the finance adviser to the military-controlled interim government on Monday falters on the very outset, even without a specific discussion of its contents. If the finance adviser did indeed present ‘budget proposals’ by his own description, ‘to whom was he proposing this budget?’ we ask. In the tradition of modern civilised nation states, finance ministers propose budgets to political representatives of the people, in parliament. In the absence of a parliament and any form of people’s representation in the country right now, the idea of a budget ‘proposal’ appears to be self-contradictory.
We also find it somewhat farcical that the adviser has attempted to window dress the lack of the public’s say on this budget, by inviting public reactions in the form of letters and emails, implying that his government might go so far as to amend budgetary proposals, but no overall approval mechanism is necessary. We also note that the finance adviser’s choice of mechanisms for delivery of this public reaction is loaded against a majority of the people of Bangladesh. For one, all those on the wrong side of the digital divide — i.e. roughly 98 per cent of the population who have no access to email — will not be able to express their views on the budget to the finance adviser. On the other hand, a significant portion of the country’s population is illiterate or barely literate — and though they might accept the challenge of critiquing the budget on real paper, they will still have to endure the perils of inefficiency and mismanagement of the Bangladesh postal services to make their views known to the finance adviser.
On the basis of these facts, we can only conclude that a majority of the people have no practical means to react to or express their views on the ‘proposed’ budget and the interim government that had no legal or political legitimacy to formulate a budget in the first place, has certainly fallen short on its social legitimacy to do so. Looking at the lone figure of the finance adviser on television, proposing his budget to no one in particular on Monday, we were naturally reminded of previous budgets formulated and presented in times of military autocracy in the country’s history. We can only hope that our society will emerge out of this abyss of non representative governance.
Nonetheless, since we believe the finance adviser’s budget will be implemented in the coming year, we will share some of our observations on its contents. The salient features of the ‘proposed’ budget seem to be consistent with budgets of the past formulated by military regimes. There is a yawning deficit, dependence on foreign aid has increased, public sector expenditure will increase, and social sector allocations are generous, if populist. While the higher reliance on foreign aid will undermine the country’s sovereignty through increased foreign meddling, the widened deficit will be financed through bank borrowing—nationally and internationally — increasing the country’s debt servicing burden in years to come. Furthermore, increased bank borrowing and public expenditure may have a ‘crowding out’ effect on the private sector, stifling economic growth. And needless to say, while the proposed budget does see an increase in social safety net outlays, the government’s poor implementation of development programmes from the 2007-008 fiscal indicate that they too might be slashed by the year end.
We, however, have specific concerns over budgetary allocation in the education sector, particularly vis-à-vis budgetary allocation for the defence sector. When the country needs to invest more and more in the education sector to create enlightened citizenry with a view to surviving effectively in a competitive world, the budgetary allocation in the education sector has decreased, even if nominally, while it has increased in the defence sector by Tk 1,000 crore. While we have no doubt that it is very important that our national army needs to be equipped with professional skills, training, and equipment for our national security, we are also aware that a better educated, politically conscious and economically developed citizenry is the best guarantee for national security of any state these days. If the budgetary allocation is any indication, the government does not seem to be aware of this.
An anti-knowledge move
The finance adviser’s proposal for increase in import duty on ‘printed papers’, which, we believe, means books and brochures, and ‘pictorial and drawing books’ for children gives away the government’s seeming penchant for self-contradiction. It professes, on the one hand, its commitment to building a knowledge-based society and narrows down, on the other, avenues to knowledge, which books essentially are. The proposal is decidedly anti-knowledge, and thus suicidal, since knowledge is regarded as a primary prerequisite for security and prosperity of a nation state.
It appears from the finance adviser’s speech that the proposal may have been a consequence of intense lobbying by a section of the publishing industry. While we have maintained that many a demand of the publishing industry are justified, further increase in duty – which is already inordinately high – on books and brochures is certainly not among those. Moreover, such a squeeze on imported books may very well negate the government’s plan to spend more on the information technology sector. Most of the books on information technology in use here are imported. These books not only keep us updated but also provide us with a platform so that our IT professionals may some day become major providers rather than users.
What is more shocking is the government’s plan to increase customs duty on pictorial and drawing books for children. These books not only familiarise children with different cultures but also stoke their imagination. We wonder wherefrom such antipathy to children stems. The finance adviser’s justification, i.e. ‘the contents of these books, in most of the cases, are not in conformity with our own values and cultures’, is both preposterous and duplicitous. Need we remind the incumbents that policies they pursue, which are essentially dictated by the multilateral lending agencies, are also not in conformity with ‘our own values and cultures’?
The plan to raise duty on imported books is yet another instance of the government’s propensity for compromising the interest of the many for the gains of the few. It would be well-advised to not only do away with its plan to impose further duty on imported books but also slash the tariff that already is in place.
Nepal: Great expectations,
great challenges
The twenty-first century, it is often said, will witness a reassertion of Asian states in global perspective. Nepal is sandwiched between two Asian giants of China and India. Its neighbourhood is nuclearised, like that of Bangladesh. A democratic, progressive and conflict-free Nepal is a necessity not only for Nepal but for regional peace. Expectations are great and equally great are the challenges,
writes Zakeria Shirazi
NEPAL is a changed landscape today. It has been turned into a republic, and a secular one. The 240-year-old monarchy has been abolished. The change has not been precipitous or traumatic; over the two-year period of the movement for democratisation King Gyanendra Bahadur Shah Dev’s powers and privileges were being whittled down in slow and continuous doses. That way the leaders demonstrated considerable caution and wisdom. The large-scale violence that was apprehended did not occur for which the credit goes to the leaders as much as to the Nepalese army. Despite the decade-long confrontation with insurgents the army acted responsibly at the transitional phase. The king was being gradually emasculated, his special powers were taken away, he was made to pay taxes, he was denied the power to command the army, his Naranhiti Palace is being converted into a museum (it could be converted into any public building but a museum will specially remind people that some institutions belong to the past and are anachronistic), thousands of acres of the royal lands have been seized, and a dozen royal palaces have been expropriated.
In fact, after the interim constitution came into effect in January 2007 the king had ceased to function at all. Gyanendra’s personal business enterprises in tea and hotel business have been left untouched and he will enjoy police protection. The army, the main support base of the king, has been effectively neutralised. All this has been effected by and large smoothly, without any significant commotion. (Although 13,000 people were killed during the ten-year-long insurgency, there was no large-scale violence during the last two years after the political and constitutional process was set on motion.) These developments have proved that kings are not symbols of national unity; they are symbols of national delusion, everywhere.
Not that there are no royalist supporters left in Nepal. Also, there are supporters among the Hindu fundamentalists of India, the BJP and VHP which tend to equate kingship with Hindutva. The rump of the Nepali royalists has been completely sidelined. (Of course, even small remnants of the old order can create a problem if things go badly.) Only four lawmakers, as against an overwhelming 560, voted for retention of kingship.
The king himself made his ouster easy. He was not popular, even less so on account of his wayward son, the crown prince Paras. And he was making one mistake after another. He learnt his bitter lesson that while politicians, like any other class of people, may be competent or incompetent, honest or corrupt, maligning politicians on a wholesale basis does not make any ruler more acceptable to the people. The few years of his rule/reign, while less repressive and less cruel than some other modern-day autocracies like that of the Shah of Iran, was singularly without any developmental landmark. His contribution to Nepal was more as a nature-lover and conservationist than as a ruler. The deadline for him to vacate the palace expires tomorrow. So unpopular he became indeed that his proposed temporary retreat to a lesser royal resort met loud protest from groups of young men.
The thumping victory of the Maoists was surprising – 220 out of 601 seats. The people’s movement since April 2006 was a patient effort to consolidate the coalition of the mainstream political parties with the Maoists but after the election the Maoists are themselves the mainstream! What explains this? One explanation may be that the Nepali society had been class-ridden and the Maoists were able to make a convincing appeal to the underdogs, particularly the Madhesis living on the plane. There were flirtations with democracy before also but the Madhesis enjoyed no real empowerment. The vertical fragmentation of the class-rent Nepali society is literal – the privileged classes live on higher barometric locations on the hills while the poor mostly live on the lower agricultural plane lands.
After the first flush of victory is over the time comes for sober reflection, for charting future course and for consensus. After braving the fiercest challenges of the last two years Nepal’s leaders are proving their ability on this score also. Of course, the first constituent assembly session began badly on May 28 leading to a delay of 12 hours. Who would be the president? The interim constitution does not provide for the office of president. The president’s is a decorative office but this decorative office wields command of the army and is toothed with powers to clamp the emergency. After the Maoist leader Pushpa Kamal Dahal, better known as Prachanda, willy-nilly accepted the octogenarian leader Girija Prasad Koirala as the president, one stumbling block has been removed. Prachanda was perhaps apprehensive that a leading political leader even in a ceremonial post may act assertively.
There was also a difference of opinion between the Maoists and the other parties on whether the constitution should provide for a simple majority or two-thirds majority for bringing down the government. The constitutional provision in most democracies is for a simple majority and the Nepali Congress and the Communists (UML) and other non-Maoists are pressing for that, seemingly fearful that with the Maoists in effective power sharing things may go out of hand and so the toppling of the government should remain the easy option. But Prachanda realises that the more than one-third seats that they possess will be an effective guarantee against such an eventuality as no-confidence motion will then be tougher.
Commentators think that Prachanda’s honeymoon with power will be short-lived. But nightmare is for the night and should not distract the builders of the new Nepal from daytime’s business. If Nepal can succeed in integrating the rebels of yesterday into mainstream politics, it will uphold a model for other insurgency-ridden countries. What role will Prachanda’s thousands of rebels play in peacetime? Can they, or should they, be integrated into the regular army? How far can pragmatism of the Maoists temper their ideology? What will be the Maoists relationship with the army and the bureaucracy? Politicians can make tactical bedfellows with any stranger but the bureaucracy is usually more cognisant of what they tend to perceive as ‘the system’. On the Indo-Nepal treaty Prachanda wants its renegotiation (not outright scrapping, which he knows will be rash). He thinks recruitment of Nepali youths for serving in Britain’s Gurkha army compromises national prestige. Fewer Gurkhas are now recruited by Britain but their fierce fighting skill is still appreciated and military experts say Britain’s 1982 Falkland war with Argentina was almost evenly fought and Her Majesty’s government finally won the war because of the Gurkha fighters.
Great challenges lie ahead. Constitution writing, managing prices and law and order, development. A big developmental question is how Uncle Sam will view a government partnered by Maoists. Will US aid and foreign investment be forthcoming?
According to latest reports, Nepal’s three big parties in the constituent assembly have veered closer to a consensus on most of the disputed issues. Two tripartite panels are being set up to hammer a consensus on preparing a draft to amend the constitution, to direct the ongoing peace process to its ‘logical conclusion’ and to strike a power-sharing deal among the parties. Nepal is the nearly the same territorial size as Bangladesh and with a population of 29 million has vastly more favourable land-man ratio. Yet the people are poor. Perhaps mainly due to feudal structure of society. The democratic process by itself is an inadequate liberating force unless fortified by secularism and economic justice. The twenty-first century, it is often said, will witness a reassertion of Asian states in global perspective. Nepal is sandwiched between two Asian giants of China and India. Its neighbourhood is nuclearised, like that of Bangladesh. A democratic, progressive and conflict-free Nepal is a necessity not only for Nepal but for regional peace. Expectations are great and equally great are the challenges.
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