Development 2.0--by Nadeem Ul Haque

I for one feel that these columns lamenting terrorism and asking for state to wake up and fight are overdone and repetitious. Allow me to raise some questions that all of us need to face.  1.  Are we only getting views of elite columnists? Do the ordinary people agree? 2. Is the state that has been used by elite for predation, capable of the task?  3. Are these columnists concerned only with the unreformed state doing battle or would they agree that without wholesale reform to rebuild state and social contract this war cannot be won? 4. Where were these thinkers when the rent seeking, predatory state preyed upon the poor and the disadvantaged? Eg. Land acquisition of poor farmers to build housing colonies and industrial estates. When their schools/universities stripped.  5. Was the state not used mainly for elite rent seeking for decades? Did that not leave the poor searching for solutions through informal markets which we love to call "undocumented"? Did...

Is the budget a law? Then why is it violated so easily? When the budget is passed by parliament it is a law that lays out the expenditure limits and where expenditure is to be made. It also passes a revenue and financing plan. Over the years we have seen how easy it is to violate the this law.  Expenditures are always turn out to be larger than envisaged in the law. Most of the sectoral expenditures made turn out turn out to be contrary to the law. In particular, realized development expenditures are often less than in the law. Revenues are always less than in the law but what is worse, some of the decrease happens because the FM and the ECC hand out tax exemptions as politics or other considerations demand. Article 77 says Parliament has the power to tax and the tax law enunciates taxes that should prevail by law.  Yet MOF is able to violate the constitution and the law with ease. Unfortunately, Parliament is too unconcerned or unaware of its responsibility. The E...