Most Read

Budget fever

4 July 2004, 18:00 PM
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
By Alif Zabr, Dhaka
4 July 2004, 18:00 PM
. PHOTO: STAR
The budget has come, and is gone (for practical application). In the family, nobody is interested. It is too technical, GDP, GNP, growth rate, interest rates, revenue and capital, investment and saving, poverty alleviation, rural thrust, marginalisation, and so many other technical terms are used by the analysts in the mass media. I asked a friend what was the difference between GDP and GNP, and when to apply which yardstick. He mumbled something in code language, which left me no wiser. There are two other unfathomable issues: politics, and reading a woman's mind.

The pre-budget fever is like chicken pox or measles, the itch lasts for a week or seven days, take your choice. Take the news item from Thailand: heavy betting on the coming WC football masala (our cricket is now at the jhaall-moori stage). The prices in the bazaar shops go up, in anticipation of higher taxes, and hoarding and profiteering tactics. Luckily, the experienced FM treated smoking as a minor aberration, and raised the levy by only two Taka per Tk 100; perhaps anticipating two percent less smog or 2% more transparency.

In this budget season, the times are sensitive, politics, law and order, and the mysterious visit of the US Defence Secretary. The opposition is more hostile on the streets than inside the House. Marginal cosmetic treatment was expected (in the budget), and its was duly offered. The problem in Dhaka is the aversion to deal roundly with square issues (not the other way round) at the core. That reminds us of the erupting volcano, the sight is more spectacular than the core theories. Our politics is like that, avoiding the core issues.

Google News LinkFor all latest news, follow The Daily Star's Google News channel.

As head of the family, I have domestic budget problems, like others in the same leaking boat. How the two ends can meet, seamlessly, without a visible bridge (the latter could be sabotaged). But wily critics of the budget always manage to find invisible cracks to plug in their hypotheses. These holiday pranks are forgotten after a while; when Mr Applied Budget knocks at the front door of each home. Salvation or solicitation?

A mid-term budget has to follow the path of the golden mean. It is not Stafford Cripp's years of austerity during (and after) the wartime, when irate half-fed citizens of HM cried "Export Cripps!"