A season of festivity dampenedby a dismal budget
he festive season has started with the radio blaring forth carols. TV stations vie with each other to show visuals of Christmas decorations, fiestas of songs, colourful presentations, wonderful discounted sales and Banks each try to compete with easy to obtain loans and leases! With all this competition to impress on the people what a wonderful season of joy, happiness and plenty they can enjoy the dismal budget passed with glee by the ever obliging two third majority in Parliament seems to have apparently damped the seasonal festivity.
With the price of essential goods ever escalating due to the readymade excuse that imported goods carry a duty on them and almost every essential food item is imported, people would just have to make believe in enjoying the festivity but they will find it difficult to persuade their youngsters who see a different world by the number of advertisements on radio TV and the print media, to be happy with just the nothingness of the purchasing power of the income their parents bring after all their toil and labour. The increase of the public servants salary by just Rs. 40 a day from January next year is not going to bring to the table any of the victuals they see so beautifully presented on the TV screen!
People in the middle and lower income group had all a manner of expectations from this Budget, after all the end of the war was now past history and the beautification of Colombo seemed to be complete – at least the main roadways, highways and express ways were in place even though the small by-ways and lanes in the city have potholes which can drown a three wheeler tyre! CHOGM is completed with all its pageantry and the people expected a better deal from the government. True enough the President in making the Budget speech did not miss out on any section, from Mahapola university students who sought an installment increase of Rs. 5000, to fishermen and farmers who dreamed of getting their fishing gear and agricultural equipment at a lower price, private and public sector workers felt that a 10.000 increase would help them to at least feed their children without griping about the prices, and the much harassed housewife wished that the prices of electricity and fuel be reduced ! Super markets have been levied a new tax and the government expects a return of Rs.15,000 million from it. Most of these super markets are where most of the ordinary folk buy their provisions from. People who used to go to the weekly fair to buy their provisions for the whole week don’t do so now. Hence the tax on super markets is an indirect tax on the general public that purchases their provisions from them.
Pensioners the pre-2006 have not been forgotten but as one irate pensioner commented, the increased allowance would (all things been the same!) enable them to buy just a measly bun for the day!
Well ,the very prosperous looking Parliamentarians ( they somehow appear, in their sojourn to Parliamentary privileges, to have lost their lean and manifesto hungry look, their promises appear lost in their search for ministerial portfolios but they all are happy!) After all they have their limousines to send their precious off-springs to school, to buy the school books needed for most of the kids who are studying at international schools and to provide for all the fun and games the little darlings need! But the slogan that Christmas and the need of the years festivity is lost on them, why bother, with a vacant listless Opposition they are assured of their positions so long as they say “Aye” to any Bill presented.
If only this extraordinary jumbo cabinet and astronomical number of Ministers and deputies can be reduced to a manageable figure of 20 or a few more, then surely the Budget could have been made more people-friendly. Perhaps those who belong to the privileged strata of society could reflect on the words of this little verse: But when bells chime loud calling with longing Awakening a forgotten long suppressed faith Ah! Child – gift of a love, designed in the shadow Of a distant Cross, come again, fill our barren futility Of the worldly greatness of our ownselves, with a love That embraces within the mantle of compassionate care
The lost, forgotten and
despairing poor.