And basic economics
The argument – this time in the wake of the oil tanker tragedy – that the government should have focused on hospitals, etc, instead of roads and bridges does not imply that it should build only hospitals, not roads, of course. If people had a lot of fancy hospitals and lousy roads connecting them, they would have let the government know come election time. And, of course, there’ll never be enough in the kitty to do all the right things all the time, due to limited means and unlimited ends and all that.
But if the government had kept sight of the first basic rule of economics – optimal utilisation of limited resources – perhaps it would have priortised differently. A country with a population explosion, health emergency, education emergency, not to mention 60pc children being born stunted (World Bank), could perhaps do more urgently with more hospitals and schools than eight-lane motorways and mega power plants. The latter are a rare absurdity. There’s already enough power generation capacity in the country to meet demand. The problem is nobody pays, hence the circular debt – which was once paid in full to the tune of Rs500b and has risen to approximately Rs500b again!
That, again, does not mean that countries that do have hospitals do not have problems, or unfortunate tanker blast victims there have burn units at a half a mile. It is concerning, though, that our government stresses that social overhead capital comes before basic human development. That not only does not make much economic sense, it’s also not very democratic.
