Respite needed

THE federal budget is rightly bemoaned as a futile exercise. The space available for anything particularly creative — meaningfully redistributive or growth-enabling — is extremely limited. Instead, nearly every budget of the last decade and a half has been an exercise in managing the fiscal deficit under an IMF programme. Once that’s accounted for, the remaining scraps are distributed as largesse mostly between different arms of the state (and those close to those arms). Every sitting government can, with some merit, claim to be the inheritor of a particularly bad situation. That this extractive revenue appetite is dictated by long-standing issues not of its own creation. That ballooning debt has to be serviced and for that more revenue is an inescapable necessity. That the luxury of pursuing growth does not exist, especially when the IMF looms large. That the straitjacket imposed by entrenched economic dysfunction cannot be thrown off so easily. This would be an evadable charge if it’s a party’s first time in government. But if time spent as the face of the federal government lies in the double digits, perhaps some reflection and accountability are merited. Stretching back to the previous assembly, this will be the current dispensation’s fifth straight budget (under three different finance ministers). Surely that’s enough time to muster some creativity and some resolve to escape the so-called straitjacket. Yet all one can fear is a familiar accounting exercise that aims to extract a few more rupees from a narrow, weary economic base. All one can fear is a familiar accounting exercise that aims to extract a few more rupees from a narrow, weary economic base. Within this base, it’s worth remembering that the vast majority of people are already reeling from a fresh cost-of-living crisis triggered by the imperialist war on Iran. With pump prices still at least 40 per cent higher than their pre-war base, and with second-order effects of pricier oil impacting at least 25