How to spend a Trillion Rupees?

Let us congratulate our incompetent government for presenting a trillion Rupees budget. For us common folks, we have to think twice before spending our monthly paycheck whereas for our corrupt government folks, they only think about spending the cash they don't have.

Half of our budget will come from our taxes. And our government hopes to get loans and grants from bideshis to cover the other half.  If our sarkari hakim sahebs were not that corrupt then we could probably cover all of our budget from taxation alone. 

Our fake-VAT Bill byparis pay off our politicians and civil servants so that they can evade taxes. The state treasury get a Rupee while our con artists, civil servants and corrupt clowns make more.

Our Finance Minister Lord Bishnu tells us that the government hopes to achieve an economic growth of 6.8% this year which means that most of our economists and even bideshi consultants from ADB and World Bank must hold fake academic certificates. Maybe the CIAA should ask for original transcripts from all of them.

The experts think that we won't be able to even achieve a 1% growth.  Either our government needs to buy new Japanese calculators or somebody just doesn't know how to use the Excel spreadsheet at our Finance Ministry.

Our hawatari government tell us that we will have local elections by December. Yes, finally we will have our own ward chairpersons and mayors. Well, the last time we had our own representatives at the local level was back in 2002. Since then, our local bodies have been run by civil servants who really don't care much about the local needs and are scared of the so-called All-Party Mechanism. 

Yes, share the development budget among the political parties while the public gets nothing. Even if they carry out development projects, it's mostly half-baked jobs which doesn't help anyone except the netas and the contractors.

It's been more than a year since we got hit by the Big One and the government is yet to carry out any reconstruction and rehabilitation projects in the affected districts. The National Reconstruction Authority (NRA) will get roughly 1.4 billion US$ dollars and earthquake-affected families will get additional 300,000 Rupees each. 

We all know that the real victims will get peanuts whereas our local netas and their cadres will pocket the rest by adding fake victims on the list. And the billion dollar reconstruction dough will be shared by everybody from our civil servants, contractors, clowns and cadres but not the common folks.

Our civil servants will get a 25% salary hike this year. Yes, give them a raise because they do work hard to provide services to the people. A peon will make twenty thousand Rupees while our hakim sahebs will make fifty. And then we have the over-time bonus, dress allowances and other chiya kharcha as well. 

But we all know that it is still not enough. How on earth do you think a government secretary is able to build a nice mini-mansion in the capital and send his or her kids abroad for further studies. 

Well, most do get free gift hamper from the Indian Embassy for their kids to attend schools in India but not everyone is lucky. As for their mansions, they seem to be either a frugal spender or received tons of gold and cash from their rich in-laws.

As usual, this government has also gone crazy and has announced to end load shedding in two years while we will have 10,000 MW of electricity by then. It has taken us a decade to generate 40 MW of electricity and we have only half of what we need so far. 

If we do the math, it will probably take us another century to achieve the hydro target. But by then we will not need hydropower. Somebody will come up with a new technique to generate electricity from your hair, nails and even booger.

Our government has allocated two billion and half dollars for the School Sector Development Programme. Yes, as always our public school teachers get paid for not doing much while our school kids don’t even get textbooks on time. 

Each district headquarters will get Rs 9 Karod each. Half of it will go to projects that benefit no one but the cadres. And the idea of developing 10 cities as smart cities is nothing but another joke. 

First, show us that you can make our capital a smart city by having adequate drainage, water supply and 24 hour electricity. Our government can't even manage the sewage flowing into the Bagmati River and yet they come up with more nataks.

And talking about self-sufficiency, we will be self-sufficient in eggs in a year and we will get to eat our own chicken, goats and buffaloes in two years while we will no longer have to drink Desi milk in the next three years. Yes, the government can make all this possible only if each household in the country gets a dozen chickens, four goats and two buffaloes and one Holstein cow. 

I think our government can reduce our budget deficit if we implement austerity measures in the government. Why do our thulo mancheys need to ride around in luxury vehicles with a dozen or more security personnel. It's sad to read about how more than 10% of our police force works as slaves for our politicians and high-ranking civil servants. 

I think we can save a few percentage points on our budget if we curtail such wasteful spending of state treasury to provide perks to our buffoons. Well, let us wish our civil servants all the best because without their help, the government will not be able to spend all the money. 

It's the same story every year where not even a third of the money allocated for development projects get spent. It will be the same story this fiscal year as well but at least our civil servants, contractors and cadres will be happy. After all, isn't that why we have a government in the first place?

Guffadi is a grumpy old man who blogs at guffadi.blogspot.com. You may contact him at maguffadi@gmail.com