Shri Pranab Mukherjee will present the interim Budget general for 2009-10 , today at 11 am. He is suppose to lay on the Table the following Statements under section 3(1) of the Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management Act, 2003: -
(i) Macro-Economic Framework Statement;
(ii) Medium-Term Fiscal Policy Statement; and
(iii) Fiscal Policy Strategy Statement.
The Bill to be introduced is Finance Bill, 2009
The discussion on the Budget begins a few days after its presentation. In a democratic set-up, Government is anxious to give Parliament full opportunity to discuss the budgetary provisions and the various proposals for taxation. Since Parliament is not able to vote the entire budget before the commencement of the new financial year, the necessity to keep enough finance at the disposal of Government in order to allow it to run the administration of the country remains. A special provision is, therefore, made for "Vote on Account", by which Government obtains the ‘Vote of Parliament’, for a sum sufficient to incur expenditure on various items for a part of the year.
Normally, the Vote on Account is taken for two months only. But during election year or when it is anticipated that the main Demands and Appropriation Bill will take longer time than two months, the Vote on Account may be for a period exceeding two months.
It is very important that in this kind of Vote on Account Budget , no Major financial decisions could be made , due to the proximity of electoral process , for the nation. In a time, Nations economy needs more attention, the entire energy could be diverted to a political process which can even lead the tendency to move for an conventional solution or an innovative solution further and move away from using this opportunity to create ‘transformative solutions’.
Articles 112-116 of the Constitution spell out the measures required to enact Bills relating to the financial expenditure of the Union government. Importantly, Article 112 requires that the President shall cause the annual financial statement (AFS)—containing the receipts and expenditure from the consolidated fund of India for that year—to be laid before Parliament, and the subsequent Articles describe the contents as well as the procedure for getting these estimates passed.
Article 116.1(a) permits that pending the process in Articles 113 and 114, Parliament may authorize in advance the passing of expenditure relating to part of the financial year and this is described as vote on account.
Normally, budgets for the ensuing year are presented at the end of February, and since the approval of Parliament under Article 112 relates to the current year, the passage of the budget happens after 1 April. Meanwhile, a vote on account under 116.1(a) passed before 31 March enables the government to carry on business until the Finance Bill is passed.
In an election year such as this one, the government does not present the full budget—first, since the passage of the budget will have to happen after 1 April, when elections would already have been notified, and second, since the new government should have the opportunity of deciding the allocation of receipts and the source of revenues.
In 2004, 1998, 1996, 1991, etc., the outgoing governments presented votes on account to Parliament, and the full budget was taken up by the new government in office. In 1999, Parliament by unanimous consent approved the passage of the budget even after the government had lost its majority in April, as the budget had already been presented on 28 February, before the government fell, and debated upon.
There is some confusion in the media on whether the Bill to be presented to Parliament would be for a vote on account, a budget or an interim budget. A budget normally includes new schemes and new taxation proposals, or the doing away of taxes. Changes in income tax have to be enacted as law, while changes in customs and duties are by notification.
Announcements of new programmes and expenditure have also to be approved by the government in that financial year. It does appear, therefore, that the government would be constrained to approve expenditure to continue in the same manner as the current year through a vote on account for some months until the elections are over and the new AFS can be prepared.
The debate is over whether the government can announce new schemes and programmes or notify changes in tariff in direct or indirect taxes. There is certainly the temptation that, given the impending elections, some major program announcement be made or some tariff concessions be announced.
While customs and excise duties can be changed at any time—parliamentary approval is not required—changes in other taxes cannot be attempted, for it would require the Finance Bill to be passed. Similarly, announcements are fine but any expenditure for new schemes will have to form part of the new AFS, which can be approved only after 1 April. Hence programme announcements, if any, would not have budgetary allocations, and the Election Commission may well frown on such pre-budget announcements.
This is perhaps the reason that a slew of off-budget announcements has been made. The reduction in prices of petrol, diesel and LPG, and the cosmetic reduction in home loan rates announced by State Bank of India are some recent examples.
The promise by the deputy chairman of the Planning Commission (supposedly a non-political appointment) in Davos, that there would be only a vote on account. But that there would be lots of goodies in the new budget if the United Progressive Alliance, comes to power, is a bit in poor taste but proves that the government is wary of making too many announcements at this time and would like to nibble away at concessions that will not attract the chief election commissioner’s attention.
The situation of Financial meltdown is definitely critical globally, and it is requiring an attitude, which will start a new line of thinking from the individual and the collective . President Obama is going to sign the stimulus bill on Tuesday .
So there are two important steps which will be taken both by Govt. of India and also by US Government consequently, to heal the wound of economic crisis.
After 25 years again ,Pranab Mukherjee today is suppose to present the Budget .
What will be effect of these two disparate events to atleast, do some healing work in the Global Financial Crisis .
It is very interesting that the old structures of Economic thinking are breaking down and the new structures are coming in . The healing working could be only possible to be done when we start accepting a new line of thinking that our collective worth doesn’t depend on money , but our money depends on our Collective worth
While the old structures of finance are based on Mental process of Economic thinking where we grow our money.
The new structures are going to come from Supra-mental process of Economic thinking, where we put effort to grow the Individual sense of worth along with collective sense of worth .
The Supramental process of Economic thinking , will be based on 'Synthetic thought' where economic thought will get related to Environmental thoughts and Sociological and spiritual thoughts . It is where the sense of collective and individual worth which is a spiritual development of individual and collective manifest as money. That is the money , which could be aligned with environmental , sociological and spiritual priorities of mankind.
There would be a master drafts on areas of
(i) Macro-Economic Framework Statement- The Macro Economic statement will be then transformed into a four dimensional framework where each economic decision could be related with the social and environmental implication along with , how it will benefit to the improve the sense of collective worth.
(ii) Medium-Term Fiscal Policy Statement – Even Medium term Fiscal policy , provisions should be made to create programs which would help people to bring back in there life a sense of worth . It is important , this things would be done by the people who are losing employment , that they are made to do something , which does not make them think , that they don’t worth anything at all. This huge talent pool should be utilized to do something meaningful for the entire population. It could be as small as creating a small doll ‘psunamika’ which was done in Auroville by ‘Upasana ‘ – a commercial institution in fashion designing to improve the sense of worth in the crisis hit population . Something like ‘economika’ could be a great concept to work for.
(iii)Fiscal Policy Strategy Statement where each economic decisions
could be related to the Macro Environmental , Macro-societal,
and Macro Spiritual developments with taking a space of one
year and seen that how it could grow the sense of collective and
individual worth and give a new feeling of well being .
This would be the ways how the nature of money could be changed. Only when the nature of money could be balanced with environment, societal and spiritual objectives of the World , the Global financial crisis. There is no other way , the nature now demands straightway , the change of the nature of money.
This is where we have to emerge something call 'Supramental money' - where money will play near to the role, of what it is suppose to play as a visible Universal force , that could take care of the true needs of every individual in the planet .
A 'green money' would be close to the concept of 'artha' in Ancient India where the money is connected with the environmental , social and spiritual priorities, and not compartmentalized and disconnected tool which would dissatisfy human needs.
The Supramental money is a transformed where it money is connected with the individual sense of well being and also the collective sense of well being . When people are focused more in worth and less in money , they will stop the flow of money as they stop now . If money is also allowed to have a aging process , like everything in Nature has an aging process , then it will have much more positive implication in the life of human being .
One such system, called Frei Geld or "free-money" was proposed in 1906 by Selvio Gessel in The Natural Economic Order. Gesell's free-money bears a form of negative interest called demurrage. Periodically, a stamp costing a tiny fraction of the currency's denomination must be affixed to it, in effect a "user fee" or a "maintenance cost"; another way to look at it is that the currency "goes bad" – depreciates in value – as it ages. (Of course, today this would be done electronically.)
If this sounds like a radical proposal that could never work, it may surprise you to learn that no less an authority than John Maynard Keynes praised the theoretical soundness of Gesell's ideas (with one critical caveat [1]). What's more, the system was actually tried out with great success, and is again in use today.
The best-known example was instituted in the town of Worgl, Austria, in 1932. To remain valid, each piece of this locally-issued currency required a monthly stamp costing 1% of its face value. This anti-hoarding measure spurred citizens to spend their money quickly, even to pay their taxes early. Instead of generating interest and growing, accumulation of wealth became a burden—much like possessions are a burden to the nomadic hunter-gatherer. Worgl's economy took off; the unemployment rate plummeted even as the rest of the country slipped into a deepening depression; public works were completed, and prosperity continued until the Worgl currency (and hundreds of imitators) were outlawed in 1933 at the behest of a threatened central bank.
A similar story transpired in the United States. With national currency evaporating through an epidemic of bank failures, citizens and local governments created their own. By 1933, several hundred cities and even states were preparing to launch, or had already launched, "emergency currencies." Many of these were stamp scrips like the Worgl currency. Despite the vigorous advocacy of prominent economist Irving Fisher, Roosevelt banned all emergency currencies when he launched the New Deal and declared a bank holiday in March, 1933, fearing the new currencies' decentralizing effects.
Today we are at the brink of a similar crisis, and face a similar choice between shoring up the old world through an intensification of centralized control or letting go of control and stepping into the new. It is important to understand that the consequences of a demurrage-based currency system would be profound, encompassing economic, social, psychological, and spiritual dimensions.
Money is so fundamental, so defining of our civilization, that it would be naive to hope for any authentic shift in the way we exist in the world that did not involve a fundamental shift in money as well.
Conceptually, demurrage works by freeing material goods which are subject to natural cyclic processes of renewal and decay from their linkage with a money that only grows, exponentially, over time. As established in this dynamic is driving us toward ruin in the exhaustion of all social, cultural, natural, and spiritual wealth. Demurrage currency merely subjects money to the same laws as natural commodities, whose continuing value requires maintenance. Gesell writes:
Gold does not harmonize with the character of our goods. Gold and straw, gold and petrol, gold and guano, gold and bricks, gold and iron, gold and hides! Only a wild fancy, a monstrous hallucination, only the doctrine of "value" can bridge the gulf. Commodities in general, straw, petrol, guano and the rest can be safely exchanged only when everyone is indifferent as to whether he possesses money or goods, and that is possible only if money is afflicted with all the defects inherent in our products. That is obvious. Our goods rot, decay, break, rust, so only if money has equally disagreeable, loss-involving properties can it effect exchange rapidly, securely and cheaply. For such money can never, on any account, be preferred by anyone to goods.
Only money that goes out of date like a newspaper, rots like potatoes, rusts like iron, evaporates like ether, is capable of standing the test as an instrument for the exchange of potatoes, newspapers, iron and ether. For such money is not preferred to goods either by the purchaser or the seller. We then part with our goods for money only because we need the money as a means of exchange, not because we expect an advantage from possession of the money.
In other words, demurrage redefines money as a medium of exchange instead of being a store of value. No longer is money an exception to the universal tendency in nature toward rust, mold, rot and decay—that is, toward the recycling of resources. No longer does money perpetuate a human realm separate from nature.
Gesell's phrase, "... a monstrous hallucination, the doctrine of 'value'..." hints at another effect of demurrage—it makes us question the notion of “value.” Value assigns to each object in the world a number. It associates an abstraction, changeless and independent, with that which always changes and that exists in relationship to all else. It is part of humanity's descent into representation, the reduction of the world into a data set. Demurrage reverses this thinking and removes an important boundary between the human realm and the natural realm. When money is no longer preferred to goods, we will lose the habit of defining a thing by how much it is worth.
Whereas interest promotes the discounting of future cash flows, demurrage encourages long-term thinking. In present-day accounting, a forest that has the capacity to generate one million dollars a year every year into the foreseeable future is considered more valuable if immediately cut down for a profit of 50 million dollars. (The net present value of the sustainable forest calculated at a discount rate of 5% is only $20 million.) This state of affairs results in the infamously short-sighted behavior of corporations that sacrifice (even their own) long-term well-being for the short-term results of the fiscal quarter. Such behavior is perfectly rational in an interest-based economy, but in a demurrage system, pure self-interest would dictate that the forest be preserved. No longer would greed motivate the robbing of the future for the benefit of the present. The exponential discounting of future cash flows implies the "cashing in" of the entire earth as opposed to an immediate wholesale “liquidation” of our remaining resources.
Whereas interest tends to concentrate wealth, demurrage promotes its distribution. In any economy with a specialization of labor beyond the family level, human beings need to perform exchanges in order to thrive. Both interest and demurrage represent a fee for the use of money, but the key difference is that in the former system, the fee accrues to those who already have money, while in the latter system it is levied upon them. Wealth comes with a high maintenance cost, thereby recreating the dynamics that governed hunter-gatherer attitudes toward accumulations of possessions.
Whereas security in an interest-based system comes from accumulating money, in a demurrage system it comes from having productive channels through which to direct it – that is, to become a nexus of the flow of wealth and not a point for its accumulation. In other words, it puts the focus on relationships, not on "having". The demurrage system accords with a different sense of self, affirmed not by enclosing more and more of the world within the confines of me and mine, but by developing and deepening relationships with others. It encourages reciprocation, sharing, and the rapid circulation of wealth.
In today's system, it is much better to have a thousand dollars than it is for ten people to owe you a hundred dollars. In a demurrage system the opposite is true. Since money decays with time, if I have some money I'm not using right now, I am happy to lend it to you, just as if I had more bread than I could eat, I would give you some. If I need some in the future, I can call in my obligations or create new ones with anyone within my network who has more money than he or she needs to meet immediate needs. As Gesell put it:
With the introduction of Free-Money, money has been reduced to the rank of umbrellas; friends and acquaintances assist each other mutually as a matter of course with loans of money. No one keeps, or can keep, reserves of money, since money is under compulsion to circulate. But just because no one can form reserves of money, no reserves are needed. For the circulation of money is regular and uninterrupted.
No longer would money be a scarce commodity, hoarded and kept away from others; rather it would tend to circulate at the maximum possible "velocity". The issuer would ensure stable prices (P) according to the equation of exchange (MV=PQ) by regulating the amount of currency in circulation (M) to correspond to total real economic output (Q). The same result could be achieved by linking the currency to a basket of commodities whose level corresponds to overall economic activity, as proposed by Bernard Lietaer.
The dynamics of a demurrage-based currency system ensure a sufficient amount for all. This is in contradiction to today's economy in which a surfeit of material goods is coupled with their grossly unequal distribution. Hence the deeper contradiction in which, on the one hand, there are hundreds of millions of people who are unemployed or engaged in trivial, meaningless jobs, while on the other hand there is much important, meaningful work left undone—highlighting a disconnect between human creativity and human needs. "With Free-Money demand is inseparable from money, it is no longer a manifestation of the will of the possessors of money. Free-Money is not the instrument of demand, but demand itself, demand materialized and meeting, on an equal footing, supply, which always was, and remains, something material."
When I look at the poverty of this world, the anxiety, the desperate and destructive pursuit of a fraudulent dream of security, I can hardly stifle a howl of protest. Not because it is unjust, though it is, but because it is so unnecessary! We live, after all, in a world of plenty, and we always have. The present money system and underneath it, the enclosure of the wild into the exclusively owned, has created artificial scarcity where none need exist. It is not food or any other necessity that is scarce; it is money, whose built-in scarcity induces the same in everything else.
In a highly specialized, technological society, most of us need to perform exchanges to live. To do so we need a medium of exchange – money. Some people, noting this inescapable fact, can see no alternative but to return to a primitive society, to undo the millennia-long course of civilization, which they quite understandably view as an enormous mistake. The scenario changes if money is used to recreate rather than destroy the social relations of a hunter-gatherer. In those societies, when a hunter killed a large animal, he or she would give away most of the meat, dividing it according to kinship status, personal affection, and need. As with demurrage money, it was much better to have lots of people "owe you one" than it was to have a big pile of rotting meat, or even of dried jerky that had to be transported or secured. Why would you even want to, when your community is as generous to you as you are to it? Security came from sharing. The good luck of your neighbor was your own good luck as well. If you came across an unexpected large source of wealth, you threw a huge party. As a member of the Pirahã tribe explained it when questioned about food storage: "I store meat in the belly of my brother."
A negative-interest currency is a step toward the gift economies of yore that strengthen and define communities. Describing Lewis Hyde’s 's theory of the gift, author Jessica Prentice writes, "Part of the sacred/erotic energy of gifts is that the receiver cannot accumulate them—either a gift needs to be passed on, or another gift needs to be given so that the gift-giving energy keeps moving. Gifts are about flow, and they are meant to circulate." This is a perfect description of free-money, which like a gift collecting dust in the closet loses its value when kept unused. Free-money reverses the compulsion to constantly expand and fortify the accumulation of the private, the realm of me and mine. Just as interest shrinks the circle of self until we are left with the alienated, mercenary ego of modern civilization, demurrage, the opposite of interest, widens it to reunite us with community and all humanity, ending the artificial scarcity and competition of the Age of Usury.
Demurrage recreates, in the realm of money, the hunter-gatherer's disinclination toward food storage or other material accumulation. It resurrects the ancient hunter-gatherer mentality of abundance, in which sharing is easy and natural, in which there is no mad scramble to enclose the world. It promises a return in spirit to the "original affluent society" of Marshal Sahalins,but at a higher order of complexity. It is not a technological return to the Stone Age, as some primitivists envision after the collapse, but a spiritual return.
Wealth in a demurrage system evolves into something akin to the model of the Pacific Northwest or Melanesia, in which a leader "acts as a shunting station for goods flowing reciprocally between his own and other like groups of society." Status was not associated with the accumulation of money or possessions, but rather with a huge responsibility for generosity. Can you picture a society in which prestige, power, and leadership were accorded to those with the greatest inclination and capacity to give?
In a system where affluence comes from sharing, our focus is no longer on how to make a living. We focus instead on how to best give of our gifts. A corollary is that money and art are no longer at odds.
Imagine a life where you simply focus on your art, on your gifts, on being of service, in the serene knowledge that your needs will automatically be fulfilled as a matter of course--such an economy is possible. In it, competition is reduced to its proper domain: a yearning for excellence in all that we do. In it, productive work comes from a desire to create a more beautiful world, not to own it; to live and not just survive. We all know in our hearts such an economy is possible. We know it in our dreams, those we deny because we have to "make a living". Life becomes a grim business, a struggle. The Age of Usury presents us with an ineluctable pressure that we can resist but never escape: to make a living is to deny art, purpose, and beauty.
The locution "cannot afford to" reveals just how often money impedes our innate tendencies toward kindness, generosity, leisure, and creativity. Interest-money generates the greed that we mistake as human nature and perpetuates the illusion that security and wealth come from gathering more and more of the world unto the self, carving out a larger and larger exclusive province of "me" at the expense of every other living person, animal, plant, and ecosystem. As well it seems to directly contradict the teaching of karma, which says that what we do to the world, we do to ourselves. In our current money system, giving out to the world means less for me, not more! Free-money reverses this role and brings money into line with karma, reinforcing rather than denying its fundamental principle that by enriching the world we enrich ourselves.
When wealth is separate from accumulation but refers to a richness of relationships, each person's wealth makes everyone wealthier. Art will no longer be limited by what we can afford, for money will be art's ally not its enemy. Business will be the seeking of ways to bestow wealth upon others rather than the stripping of wealth from others. No longer, then, will our lives be full of cheap stuff. Work will no longer be bound to the search for money, but will seek out ways to best serve each other and the world, each according to our unique gifts and temperament. That will be, self-evidently, the way toward riches—both spiritual and financial, for no longer will the two be in conflict.
I would like to comment on the popular New Age idea of "prosperity programming," "opening to the flow of abundance," which is to say, becoming rich through the power of positive thinking. These ideas come from a valid source – the realization that the scarcity of our world is an artifact of our collective beliefs, and not the fundamental reality. However, they are inherently inconsistent with the money system we have today. One of the principles of prosperity programming is to let go of the guilt stemming from the belief that you can only be wealthy if another is poor; that more for me is less for you
The monetized realm grows at the expense of nature, culture, health, and spirit. The guilt we feel around money is quite justified. Certainly, we can create beautiful things, worthy organizations, noble causes with money, but on some level we are robbing Peter to pay Paul. Please understand that I am not suggesting that you not open to the flow of abundance. On the contrary, when enough people do this, the money system will change to conform to the new belief. Today's money system rests on a foundation of Separation. It is as much an effect as it is a cause of our perception that we are discrete and separate subjects in a universe that is Other.
Opening to abundance can only happen when we let go of this identity and open to the richness of our true, connected being. This new identity wants no part of usury.
My dear reader, think about it: Is it really who you are to say, "I will lend you money -- but only if you give me even more in return"? When we need money to live, is that not a formula for slavery? Significantly, the forgiveness of debts for which Solon was famous was prompted in part by the indebted servitude of a growing proportion of the population. Today, young people feel enslaved to their college loans, householders to their mortgages, and entire Third World nations to their foreign debt. Interest is slavery. And since the condition of slavery demeans the slaveholder as much as the slave, in our hearts we want none of it.
The metamorphosis of the human sense of self, the transition from an Age of Separation to an Age of Reunion, is underway today, propelled by a convergence of crises that is rendering obsolete the old self, and the civilization that rests upon it. Each crisis springs from a different facet of separation; each facet of separation contains within it the seed of its own demise. Such is today's financial crisis, the culmination of a Ponzi scheme centuries in the making and based on the delusion that a finite planet can support exponential increase forever. Today, unless we find as yet undreamed of sources of natural and social capital to incinerate, that bubble is about to burst.
The longer we hang on, the harder we scramble to apply one technical fix after another to our tottering money system, the more severe the crisis and its subsequent dislocation will be. The eventual result, however, is assured: a new system of money will emerge that is aligned with the priorities of the connected, interdependent self: sustainability, beauty, and wholeness.
Demurrage-based currency is only part of this transition. Due to space considerations I have ignored key pieces of an economy of Reunion, such as full-cost accounting, JAK banking, local currencies, mutual credit currencies, the leasing economy, P2P economics, and industrial ecology. Yet demurrage is the key. An economy that emulates ecological principles cannot rest on a money system that requires exponential growth. The two are inimical. While usury still reigns, all the other pieces will remain marginal. Nonetheless, the efforts of visionaries such as E.F.Schumacher , Paul hawken, Herman Daly and countless others are not in vain. They have planted the seeds for a new kind of economy that will heal our ravaged earth.
Money in the Age of Reunion will be an agent for the development of social, cultural, natural, and spiritual capital, and not their consumption. It will be a mechanism for the sharing of wealth and not its accumulation. It will be a means for the creation of beauty, not its diminishment. It will be a barrier to greed and not an incentive. It will encourage joyful creative work, and not necessitate "jobs". It will reinforce the cyclical processes of nature, and not violate them. And it will accompany a shift in consciousness that we are beginning to experience today, a shift toward a connected self in love with the world. That, after all, is the true self, and that is what we will return to as the pretense of everlasting increase collapses.
In an Comparitive study with Indian and Western masters of political Economy we can see ,Gesell concentrated on building the natural order of economy . Keynesian economics, is more focused on state intervention and state was seen as a better instrument for managing macroeconomics. Friedman concentrated on the individual power to define and regulate the macro economic and micro economic choices . However , kautilya of Arthasastra , considered all the aspects . It promoted the state intervention and control . At the same time , it was in favour , understanding the nature of wealth and the relation of wealth to Mother Earth . Though in a form of a monarchs power , it also emphasized about Individual power one could have with practicing proper sense control and restraining sense organs .This way , kautilya was recommending on looking after , both spiritual and material aspect of wealth.
There where lot of mathematical system which symbolizes the kautilyas understanding of a more comprehensive and complete version of understanding the spiritual and material manifestations of economic truth.
Now this is a great metamorphosis of thinking exercise , because we usually could not reach into these level when we see money as a disconnected entity . However , this kind of thinking could be impossible , if we think that about money in a synthetic way – where all the ends where given a harmonic collaboration . That is where it is important that money also follows the rule of nature .
I think , this could be a right model for macro economic framework which we can adopt in to solve the economic crisis. Obviously ,this new nature of money could be mentioned in the Macro Economic Framework Statement and a medium term fiscal policy statement where the values of gift economy are instilled in a periodic bases . On that only a fiscal policy strategy statement could be made .
Keynes discusses Gessell’s work in his 1936 classic ‘The General theory of Employment , Interest and Money . He says that the demurrage solution is sound but incomplete. Since currency is not alone in having a liquidity premium, the danger in a demurrage system would be that other forms of money, such as marginal reserve bank-money and commercial paper, would take over the role currency exercises today, with similar results. This is not a theoretically insuperable difficulty, but it does require a more comprehensive transformation in money than I can describe in this space
However , with the suggested transformation of the money and making it more interconnected reality , the opportunities do exist to practice Gessell’s thought process in a different way in Indian Macro economic context on re-defining a new
(i) Macro-Economic Framework Statement;
(ii) Medium-Term Fiscal Policy Statement; and
(iii) Fiscal Policy Strategy Statement.
For the current year .
Will we head for a solution which will transform our economy ?.
Or we will still be tied up on our rituals of politics and economics and get the crisis come to the neck ?
