People talk about how they would be able to negotiate the next twelve months. They keep saying that their plans and their New Year resolutions may not last long. Some say what with the price increases and all that, they have given up alcohol, for instance. But friends chide them to say it would be for perhaps twenty days at most.
Street narratives are each different from the other, of course. But most have an air of inevitability about them. People are worried they are not going to be able to make ends meet, and nobody is worried that the Government is not going to be able to make ends meet either, for that matter.
This has been the dilemma for those who want to balance the interests of the State with those of the people. People hardly ever relate the reality that they cannot make ends meet — with each new price increase — to the fact that it’s because their Government is suffering from the same fate. But, in any event about the latter, the people feel it is not their fault.
They are often convinced that they are conveniently there as the first line of defence when any Government is struggling to make ends meet. They conclude that there is over-spending at governmental level.
INADEQUATE
The problem is that most Governments don’t seem to convey any empathy with the people on the latter’s views about a State’s handling of its finances. Was every effort made to peel off unnecessary expenditure? Are people onto something when they feel that nothing much has been done at the source of the problem, which is State spending?
Of course people know that there is enormous debt that has to be settled. But apart from debt there is other spending, on education, health, defence, conservation and so on which also potentially accumulates State debt. The people feel they carry the burden because there has been no assiduous trimming of expenses in at least some of these areas.
It’s the way the narrative gets shape, and perspective is everything. Take for instance the fact that there are disaster zones today in both Japan and Gaza. But the causes are very different and onlookers feel there is much more that can be done when devastation is due to war, that when it is due to an earthquake. In the latter case, there is an air of inevitability about it, and that’s not wrong.
However, in both cases governments get blamed. Where earthquakes are concerned people blame the Government when they feel there isn’t an inadequate disaster response. When it concerns war, people blame governments for bad policy but sometimes they are with their rulers, and say aggression against a persistent enemy is inevitable. Sometimes the common narrative proves that in war there is a greater sense of inevitability than with a natural disaster, even though that’s counter-intuitive.
So the reality as State actors see it contrasted to the way people see it, may be very much at variance. It’s always the prevailing narrative that is important. In peacetime people may feel more lost than they feel during wartime, or during a natural disaster. They feel they are being buffeted by ill-winds they can’t quite fathom. As a result inevitably there is the feeling they are paying for somebody else’s sins.
Even if they are convinced that debt and economic collapse was due to some specific reason — corruption, or Covid or international trends or whatever — they are convinced that in the response to the crisis they have been the easy target. They wonder why there must be so much Government spending on maintaining white elephant institutions and an army that’s granted every wish in terms of procurement and recruitment.
This is why they perceive that before they are burdened something else should have been factored in, but wasn’t. When the powers that be made budgetary allocations was there any serious thought given to trimming expenses, or was it assumed that all expenses excluding those entailed in servicing foreign debt, can be covered because the people would always be there to pay for it?
Was there any serious effort at saving on expenses? Or, is public servants encouraged to be profligate? For instance, people already feel that politicians are profligate at their expense. People point to the expenses incurred maintaining the parliament canteen and fleets of vehicles for political potentates. Likewise, they are convinced that public servants have got a free pass to spend as they please and that’s because it’s assumed they, the people, can always be relied on to pick the tab.
But it would be contended, by successive governments, that there is no truth to such a people’s perception. Government spending is already at a minimum, politicians would say. If that is the case, why don’t the people empathise with the politicians?
It’s because they have rarely seen a serious discourse on curtailing the tax and spend habit. They feel the accent in matters of policy is to burden them as a first resort, not as a last resort. It’s because they rarely see politicians, irrespective of the Government that comes to power, seriously engage in a cost-cutting discussion.
It’s the same with public servants, the people are convinced. No effort is made in Government service to save or to cut corners and therefore State employees are seen to be a privileged class that’s doled out cash to spend as they please. Though this notion may be so far removed from the reality in many instances especially when areas such as health and education are concerned, the perception certainly is that the Government servant is ‘primed to tax and spend.’
It boils down to the way people see things, reason being that they anyway don’t see any serious discussion about anyone shielding them from being targeted to bear the burden.
In any event, public servants are not encouraged to save on any State allocation. State policy both here in this country and elsewhere is that the entire allocation for any task must be spent. There is no such thing as State savings on the job. Small wonder people take public servants to be spendthrifts that spend their money because they are always there to pick the tab.
SURVEYS
These perceptions cannot be changed by hiring PR teams to change the narrative. When there has never been an alternate discourse to taxation to realise tax and spend policy, it’s inevitable that people have ingrained views about their role as the targeted group.
With varying degrees of success of course various governments may have been able to drive home the idea that the burdens people experience are inevitable. But still the people ask, well, if heavy revenue generation is inevitable, why are they the first resort? Why is the Government exempt — not from taxes, but from having to watch it’s spending and cut corners just like the people have to?
This contrast is galling to most folks. Therein lays the rub. They are made to feel that it’s their civic duty to pay up, but they are not convinced about the circumstances requiring that. They feel they would do their civic duty, but they can’t go beyond the call of that duty. Why beyond? Because they feel nobody else made any effort to keep them in check, and ease the burden on them.
As long as they are convinced they are but a bit of a punching bag, they’d not participate gladly. They may participate and pay up their dues to the State because they have to. But that’s different from doing so out of a sense of civic purpose.
If anyone wants to see these ‘mentalities’ change, they have to think about the reason for these mindsets in the first place. People are not hell bent on evading. Fact is that Sri Lankans always pay, when it comes to utilities for instance. Evasion is very rare, and the surveys bear that out. But when they feel they are being persistently made to pay, they are not willing participants, and that narrative of unwilling participation is, let’s say, the unpleasant reality.
