Aitzaz Ahsan '05 - NA Budget 3 of 3

BUDGET 2005: In his speech on the National Budget in June 2005, Ahsan electrified the National Assembly of Pakistan by talking boldly on the allocation of an unreasonable proportion of resources on defence. And that too is not justified in any detail as more than Rs. 223 billion are required to be sanctioned under one lumpsum entry on one page whereas every other Ministry has to justify its prospective expenditures in the minutest details spread over 4000 pages. According to him this imbalance primarily reflected the character of the Pakistani state: that it had become a 'National Security State'. That is not the way it was envisaged by the Founding Fathers of Pakistan. They had strived to create a 'Social Welfare State'. In one of the most memorable speeches in South Asian Parliaments Ahsan begins with explaining the concept of the Budget and the history of budget-making in democracies, and ends it in the passion of poetry.

» View the original video «

YouTube | June 20, 2010

Tags:. .YouTube. .lumpsum. .aitzaz. .expenditures. .ahsan