The ongoing loan saga

Yes, our politicians’ love for foreign loans is well known and needs no explanation. Yet, isn’t the same love pushing the nation slowly but surely towards a vicious cycle of gigantic foreign debt, too, though it is already massive enough? And is it not a matter of great concern, obviously not for those who are the borrowers, and quite often hidden beneficiaries too of the same, but for the rest of us, the ordinary folk like you and I and our children and theirs, on and on.

And for all I know loans are loans, whether they are soft, hard or even with little interest and long periods of settlement: mindless borrowings (just because there are ever-ready lenders around) at the expense of a country’s economic growth, is a dangerous exercise.

Perhaps there are such loans that can be termed as free with no strings attached to them (though as the cliched adage goes there is no such thing as a ‘free lunch’), except the mandatory condition of supervision as imposed by the donor, when it comes to its usage by the borrower. Needless to say that in our part of the world, in particular, this type of loans is probably the least attractive for the intended borrowers, for they cannot use the money on building towers and going on tours, for example. And they are not given free rein to do whatever they wish and dream, that has nothing to do with the country’s economic well being.

Then there are lenders quite similar to our ubiquitous ‘village poli mudali’ in the way they conduct their lending business. They usually do not interfere with how the money is spent or where it is going, as long as they have something to hold on to as security, which in fact could be worth many times more than the loan. And, we all know the ways of our poli mudalali, don’t we? So how the borrowers are planning to service their debt is something that may not be of much concern to them.

Lastly my ‘two cents’ worth thoughts tell me this whole process of ‘borrowings’ by the governments needs transparency, be made public and audited by whoever is authorised to do so. How, when and where the money is spent should be made known to the public. After all it is our money, which is yours and mine, and those politicians are only acting on our behalf as borrowers, and they are accountable down to the last penny they spend. The taxpayer has a right to know how the money is spent, and he should also be given assurance by the government that it won’t be wasted on colossally unproductive projects such as building ‘new-world wonders or the first-in-Asia’ type of things or other grandiose projects that become ‘white mammoths’ in time to come.

Let’s all sincerely hope that our borrowers borrow with their eyes wide open. Otherwise when they open their half-shut eyes, the money will be there for them to spend or play around, only for sometime though ; but the country will have lost a lot more to the lender, some perhaps even never to be recovered or regained!

LAKSIRI WARNAKULA