By nature, we are a nation of slaves and beggars.
This summer I finished first three parts of Harry Potter series and have just started the fourth one entitled ‘Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire’. I was struck at the imaginative storylines and incisive plots of these classic witchcraft and wizardry tales for their amazing allegorical resemblance with the ever-uncertain situation in our country.
What struck me even more was a report in the papers some time ago about an eleven-year old student in a private school in Karachi who as part of her class assignment on the analogies of this most popular story’s characters said that the situation in Pakistan was similar to that in the books in which evil Lord Voldemort takes over the ministry of magic and starts hunting down Harry Potter. She reportedly said “We just hope there is a Harry Potter out there somewhere who will come and save us.”
What a tragedy and an irony that a country which on its birth was considered “twentieth century miracle” of a state and which today is a nuclear power should be looking for a Harry Potter to come and save it. Since last year, we have been running after illusory “Friends of Pakistan” with a begging bowl in our hands and ready to barter, if not ransom, whatever sovereignty is left with us. Lately, our “motherland” is also said to have been put on sale and our thoughtful rulers are looking for buyers to come and use our fertile lands for their benefit.
Indeed, like Alice in Wonderland, we as a nation never cared which way we were going. And now it doesn’t really matter which way we are gone. After a long spell of dictatorship, we had a lifetime opportunity to return to genuine democracy rooted in the will of the people but alas, we are still lost and looking for a Cheshire Puss to show us the direction. Our real problem is governance failures and leadership miscarriages. And our “minimum credible deterrence” does not work against domestic looting and marauding.
History seems to be repeating itself. Perhaps we are going back to the East India Company era. With no one like the legendary rulers of Mysore around, our feudal and feudatory political elites in power are getting nostalgic of the role their forefathers were playing in British India, and are looking for new “imperialist” masters because they just can’t reconcile to being free and independent. While our own people are being crushed to death waiting in line for food, we have invented “Corporate Agricultural Farming” as the new charter for leasing out our motherland.
Also for decades our rulers have been allocating millions of acres of areas in Southern Punjab including Rahim Yar Khan and Bahawalpur, and Baluchistan to fun-loving Arab princes and sheikhs for their annual hunting expeditions and falconry sprees in Pakistan just to gain their goodwill, personal favours and costly gifts. We have never understood much less valued the sanctity of independence or that of the country’s territorial integrity. By nature, we are a nation of slaves and beggars.
Alas! Quaid-e-Azam did not get to know us well. We now have a government which the people brought to power to bring about an end to dictatorship. It was a vote of no confidence against the last government and the system that it represented. It was a referendum for change but till now there is no change visible anywhere in the country. Governance is at its worst. Corruption is rampant. Economy is in shambles. Common man is suffering the worst ever hardship. The plunderers, profiteers, looters, and killers could not have a safer haven anywhere else in the world.
Since 9/11, we have been recipient of massive economic aid and relief besides huge annual remittances from overseas Pakistanis, but the people in Pakistan have yet to feel any difference in their lives. According to Section 3 of the Kerry-Lugar Bill, the US alone has given us $15 billion during this period. We don’t even know where all that money has gone. There are no roads, no bridges, no schools or any clinics that could be attributed to American assistance. The only visible signs of that money are palatial farm houses in Islamabad’s famous Chak Shahzad. No wonder the Americans now say no more blank checks.
We need a change in governmental mindset. This is the time for tightening of belts to reduce governmental spending and borrowings, controlling inflation, rationalizing GDP targets, restoring macro-economic balance, banning non-essential imports and luxuries, and reviving industry to reduce the trade gap.
Let us not blame America or India for our problems. We ourselves are responsible for being where we are today. General Musharraf left behind a legacy that would shame any nation on earth. We have done nothing to change that legacy domestically or externally. We have lost credibility as a state. The government’s trust deficit and credibility gap is too real. No one has faith in its policies or promises. No one is ready to give us funds without rigorous control and oversight mechanism. This is amply visible in the Kerry-Lugar Bill’s final version passed by the US Congress as” Enhanced Partnership with Pakistan Act of 2009. ”
Instead of fixing the fundamentals of our governance and choosing to live our own lives as an independent nation free from want and ignorance and raising our children with honour and dignity free from the fear of violence, oppression and injustice, we are back in the hands of a handful of countries who wish to help us only to advance their own agenda and protect their own national interests. We always took pride in claiming friendship with the entire international community but today we have ourselves constricted the number of our friends to a small 22-member group of “Friends of Pakistan.”
To poor Shaukat Tareen’s dismay, no one, not even the imaginary “Friends of Pakistan” will come to his rescue with any cash inflows. Their meeting in New York last month under Obama’s co-chairmanship, was an anticlimax, perhaps representing the last rites of their “burlesque.” Instead of talking of another IMF dose, Shaukat Tareen should now be looking for a new job because managing economy of a country like Pakistan requires a vision beyond loans and liquidities. Otherwise, like his namesake predecessor, the entire onus of the country’s economic ailments will become his personal “excess baggage.” . .
Capital does not grow on trees, nor does it come through loans. Loans or borrowed liquidities are not capital; they are a liability. We should avoid depending on liability as a matter of habit. Even the recently much touted “wisdom” in some “wiser” quarters does not justify living on other’s largesse. Tareen’s ministry seasoned officials could perhaps brief him better that an economic recovery blueprint requires judicious planning to match national needs and resources as well as capabilities.
In order to put the country back on the path of self-reliance, we need to be working full time on domestic growth and production, and homegrown remedies to our economic ailments. Our “friends” if any might help us only in some areas of humanitarian relevance such as Malakand IDPs rehabilitation or FATA’s “Reconstruction Opportunity Zones” (ROZs). No other cash flows will come except those in the form of ODAs or FDIs for which we currently do not have an investor- friendly environment including the requisite energy and law and order situation.
We need a change in governmental mindset. This is the time for tightening of belts to reduce governmental spending and borrowings, controlling inflation, rationalizing GDP targets, restoring macro-economic balance, banning non-essential imports and luxuries, and reviving industry to reduce the trade gap.
We should not be depending on any foreign aid. For our economic recovery and revival, let us focus on domestic resource mobilization. We are a food growing country. Let’s grow food for our own people. Give up Marco Polo culture. No more blind faith in Friends of Pakistan. Let’s be our own friends.
Instead of fixing the fundamentals of our governance and choosing to live our own lives as an independent nation free from want and ignorance and raising our children with honour and dignity free from the fear of violence, oppression and injustice, we are back in the hands of a handful of countries who wish to help us only to advance their own agenda and protect their own national interests. We always took pride in claiming friendship with the entire international community but today we have ourselves constricted the number of our friends to a small 22-member group of “Friends of Pakistan.”
To poor Shaukat Tareen’s dismay, no one, not even the imaginary “Friends of Pakistan” will come to his rescue with any cash inflows. Their meeting in New York last month under Obama’s co-chairmanship, was an anticlimax, perhaps representing the last rites of their “burlesque.” Instead of talking of another IMF dose, Shaukat Tareen should now be looking for a new job because managing economy of a country like Pakistan requires a vision beyond loans and liquidities. Otherwise, like his namesake predecessor, the entire onus of the country’s economic ailments will become his personal “excess baggage.” . .
Capital does not grow on trees, nor does it come through loans. Loans or borrowed liquidities are not capital; they are a liability. We should avoid depending on liability as a matter of habit. Even the recently much touted “wisdom” in some “wiser” quarters does not justify living on other’s largesse. Tareen’s ministry seasoned officials could perhaps brief him better that an economic recovery blueprint requires judicious planning to match national needs and resources as well as capabilities.
In order to put the country back on the path of self-reliance, we need to be working full time on domestic growth and production, and homegrown remedies to our economic ailments. Our “friends” if any might help us only in some areas of humanitarian relevance such as Malakand IDPs rehabilitation or FATA’s “Reconstruction Opportunity Zones” (ROZs). No other cash flows will come except those in the form of ODAs or FDIs for which we currently do not have an investor- friendly environment including the requisite energy and law and order situation.
We need a change in governmental mindset. This is the time for tightening of belts to reduce governmental spending and borrowings, controlling inflation, rationalizing GDP targets, restoring macro-economic balance, banning non-essential imports and luxuries, and reviving industry to reduce the trade gap.
We should not be depending on any foreign aid. For our economic recovery and revival, let us focus on domestic resource mobilization. We are a food growing country. Let’s grow food for our own people. Give up Marco Polo culture. No more blind faith in Friends of Pakistan. Let’s be our own friends.
No comments:
Post a Comment