Governments cannot seriously live under the grand delusion that the ordinary public will go into a trance on being informed that the budget deficit targets agreed on with the International Monetary Fund are being met, or that foreign exchange reserves have risen sharply (although on the back of one-off inflows and heavier borrowings). Or even that the KSE Index and market capitalisation have increased by 44pc and remittances have risen by almost 17pc (an outcome which has little, if anything, to do with government performance) and that a number of MOUs have been signed in the energy sector.

What ordinary mortals are experiencing is their own lives and earnings being wrecked by energy outages, the lack of employment opportunities and the unrelenting increase in prices of essential commodities. They are suffering from inadequately available, but highly priced, electricity — with much of the prohibitive price the result of governance failure to tackle incompetence, mismanagement, corruption and theft in the sector.

They are being subjected to inflation combined with rising unemployment, developmental activity almost grinding to a halt and the increasingly harsh, if not tyrannical, attitude of local bureaucratic structures or public-sector agencies delivering services to them as opposed to the easing in controls for businessmen.

They are also confused about the veracity of official pronouncements on achievements, because what they read or hear in the media is that a combination of ‘illusion, fudging and creative accounting’ has been harnessed into proclaiming good governance and performance.

They are witnessing independent analysts argue that ‘fudging’ has been employed in presenting an improvement in the economy’s growth rate, exports and our external accounts (contradicting data from other more reliable official sources), while ‘statistical jugglery’ has been put to use to show a healthy picture of government finances in the form of a lower budget deficit.

The analysts are saying that without a tax regime requiring different classes to contribute to state coffers on the basis of their ability to bear the burden of adjustment, the budgetary operations have, if anything, established that they have reached a dead end — nearing the end of their tether.

They are asserting that the whole exercise is a delectable dance with hands and legs tied — so limited have the government’s budgetary options become — with allocations for just two expenditure heads, interest on debt, and defence, absorbing almost all its revenues.

Missing are concerted efforts to reduce the structural vulnerabilities of the budget, and the determination to address these chronic issues in a phased manner, as opposed to the well-worn approach of temporary fixes and tinkering.

They are pointing out that these actions are required urgently because our ability to respond to the structural issues is more restricted now, and the window for decisions to avoid crises has narrowed considerably with markets and donors unwilling to wait for a political consensus to emerge. And that the strategy to keep delaying tough decisions, expecting friends off-shore to come to our rescue, is fast coming up against a brick wall.

These analysts are asserting that the IMF (essentially for global political reasons and its own need to speedily recover its past loans) has been a silent, if not an active, partner in accepting the massaging, if not blatant manipulation, of numbers. And although the IMF does not presently appear to be in the mood to pull the plug on our life support system and will continue to provide the necessary funds required to service past debts, they are wondering how long this black comedy of numbers can continue.

Will the attitude and position of the IMF harden markedly by the end of this year when the Fund would have fully recovered the funds that it had lent previously, also the time when the Americans would be packing up to leave Afghanistan?

A harsh reality being encountered by the less affluent segments of the population is the stubbornness of inflation, which has also weakened the structure of the IMF-inspired macro-economic stabilisation programme.

The rise in prices of basic consumption goods has been markedly higher than in the overall consumer price index, eroding the purchasing power of weaker classes; the most acute increase in prices being in items making up their cost of living index.

The least well-off in society are also experiencing poor access to educational, health and sanitary services, apart from depressingly low standards in quality, partly because of the unhelpful, if not boorish, attitude of the bureaucracy providing these services.

Without getting decent quality services they will be unable to contribute to, and participate in, growth. Resultantly, the growth process has been uneven, with limited segments of the population prospering, while large sections and geographical regions attained, at best, inadequate betterment in living standards.

And the problems in these sectors lie less in the realm of adequate budgetary allocations and more in the institutional and governance structures and delivery systems that can ensure the access of the poor to good quality basic services.

Ordinary people are also getting incensed at the impassive response of politicians who are being described as inept charlatans by the public. To them, it appears that the political leadership holds the view that the storm will pass, simply because everyone has a few skeletons in his cupboard.

All this is contributing to disillusionment with the entire spectrum of the ruling elite, leading to an strange restlessness and growing alienation from the civilian leadership. And this is reinforced when the leadership with its perceived suspect integrity, seemingly shows little compunction in feathering its own nest at public expense.

Hence the growing feeling that a nation whose body politic has been gripped by this moral cancer cannot expect to go far.

The writer is a former governor of the State Bank of Pakistan.

Published in Dawn, August 19th, 2014