Liberating the Economy?

Published in Frontier Post on 08-02-11


Pakistan is currently entangled with a huge financial crisis. Government coffers are totally empty as portrayed by our masters. Proffers for improvement of our fiscal position are being presented and everyone is focusing on deregulating the economy and liberating the markets from government’s control.

Living in a state which has vast amount of resources like coal, gas and recently found gold but we are unable to meet out energy resources and ultimately not being able to meet our day to day expenditures. Pakistan, the only nuclear power in Islamic world and one of the seven out of 196 plus countries in the world, doesn’t have the energy to light up stoves and bulbs of its inhabitants.

Calls for deregulation and privatization of the economy have increased since the inception of IMF program in Pakistan. IMF stresses on lesser role of government in markets and allowing the private sector to undertake what government has to. Recent example of handing over the contract for reko diq mines to foreign companies explains the policy of government.

Our public sector corporations are going under heavy losses and it is suggested that we should privatize them and let the private sector deal with it. Instance of Telecom sector is quoted in favor of privatization. One thing we forget is that the reason for these losses is mainly due to bad governance and corruption rather than the system itself. Besides accepting our own mistakes, our economists say that governments don’t do business. They, infact, are not designed to do profit making. They are cent per cent right. Governments don’t do business. The primary and sole aim of government is welfare of its residents and when a government isn’t able to do that, it calls for private sector to step in. This is what is happening in Central Asia, they have privatized all their mining and exploration works to outer world and that’s why they are still lagging so much behind even they are very rich in precious resources.

The system being implemented on us is corrupt from its core. Capitalism is designed for those who have the capital. We measure the success of our public sector organizations by the fact that how much dividends does it pay to the government. Subsidies are always maligned as they are a burden to the government especially when you give subsidy by printing more money. We don’t focus on the fact that these corporations and our whole economy is being run on the money of taxpayers. If government is in losses due to subsidies then it is the taxpayers that is ultimately benefitting from government’s loss. If a government's aim and objective is the welfare of people, then a subsidy (without printing money) is the best option for a government. If government goes in to losses by giving subsidy and relief to its nationals then what else a nation would want from a government and it would be a great success for a government if it can do that.

It is so easy for a government to distance itself from its responsibility by privatizing the institutions. Privatization is the same instrument, which these multinational companies have used in Central Asia, Ecuador and in all the less-developed countries. They give us loan and put conditions which challenge the sovereignty of the state, pressurize to hand over the contracts to their companies, as a result they get their money back and also get profit from the loan, its servicing and many more complicated terms. These IMF programmes won’t make us sovereign, infact it will deepen the roots of these colonialists in our country and will force us to give concessions even if their private security contractors kill our citizens.

This very system has distanced citizens from its government. Government’s success is measured by how much profit it is making rather than how happy its residents are. Our economic indicators like GDP focus on production rather than distribution. A state’s GDP may be very high but of what use it is when this production is not equally distributed. Success should be measured as Gross Domestic Smile GDS rather than Gross Domestic Product GDP. Governments should focus on the smiles of its residents rather than GDP and GNP.

Government is trying to push us into private sector monopoly which is further strengthened by government initiatives like copyrights and patents. From a consumer point view, government monopoly is much better than private sector’s monopoly. The electricity tariff speaks volumes about the monopoly of private sector and the hardships it gives to the consumer. Private Sector is much more efficient than the Public Sector but the thing is that private sector is always driven by the desire for profit making and that profit is always on the expense of public. Government may say that there are regulatory authorities to control the monopolies of private sector but this thing is a paradox in itself. If a government cannot do business efficiently then how can it regulate efficiently. We have to understand that by liberalizing the economy, we are threatening our own liberty.

It is about time we get to the basics and bring back our fundamentals. It isn’t too late. The new financial year is upon us and preparation of budget has started. We must streamline our direction and identify the real problem, whether it is bad governance and corruption or the system itself.

Writer is a Government Employee in Planning Commission of Pakistan

Assassination of a Governor

Published in The Frontier Post on 13-01-2011

Governor of the Punjab was assassinated by his own elite force guard last week. The assassinator claims that he killed the person, he was supposed to protect, because he committed blasphemy. This has stirred a debate, which was previously not very open, between the secular brigade and the Islam-walas. World media all around the globe portrayed it in a way which labeled the whole society as extremist.

Killing of a Governor wasn’t much important as per their writing, but the topic of whether Pakistan is entrenched with extremism has been raised. Once again the guns have been pointed towards Pakistan of promoting extremism and safeguarding the extremists. Mandated to eliminate the safe havens of al-Qaeda operatives allegedly working on Pak-Afghan border, Pakistan has been maligned with so much dirt even though Pakistan is fighting the war supposedly for this world. Last week’s event has once again ringed the alarm bells in Pakistan. Debate has begun between the rightists and leftists over the blasphemy law.

The talk is not about the blasphemy law, it is about the ideology of Pakistan i.e. what should be the ideology of Pakistan or what should be the basis of law. This war between the rightists, who advocate Two-Nation Theory and leftists, who want Pakistan to be a secular state, has always been went through this war and it is such a shame that after 63 years of independence, we are still debating over what should be the source of law in Pakistan. Everyday, since the incident, the editorials and columns of newspapers are filled with the debate over the trend of society. The society as a whole is labeled with extremism and calls for tolerance are promoted. These calls for tolerance just don’t settle in my mind. I mean, I can’t believe that people label the residents of this state as intolerant.

We are part of a country where there is no gas, no electricity, no security and even no water (when there is some water, then it is in the shape of catastrophe like floods) and still this dead nation doesn’t come on streets and tolerate all this. I wonder if the same problems would have been in any other so-called western civilized state, then the conditions would have been much different. Still we are the ones who are intolerant. The whole case of Aasia and her meeting with the Governor or vice versa, has turned into a major discussion point. The Economist, in its recent addition presented the assassinated Governor as a hero of this nation and an heir to Jinnah’s throne. Western media concludes that Governor’s only fault was that he met the ‘poor Christian lady’ who was accused of blasphemy only because of a personal fight with neighborhood but they forgot to mention that the lady was trialed and convicted, it wasn’t like as if she was sent to jail without any proper trial against her like they do in Gitmo.

The irony of being ruled by an ideology, which is imposed by the sole-superpower state of the world on the other state, is that whatever goes against their ideas of liberty and freedom are touted as extremism and fundamentalism. In this case, the hypocrisy of the west and even our so-called western–modernized intellectuals is exposed. They always advocate for democracy and sliding towards the majority but in this case, they’ve forgotten that the majority is against them. A mammoth rally in Karachi, headquarters of a secular party MQM, in support of the killer is a testament to that fact. Not commenting on whether the assassination was justified or not, the main question is why the west is making so much out of this and portraying the world that Pakistan is going to fall into the hands of Islamists.

Samuel Huntington’s theory of Clashes of Civilizations comes into play and clearly exposes west’s plan against Islam and its values. Killing a person in the name of blasphemy is extremism and executing someone in the name of holocaust is labeled as upholding the freedom. Firing in a political rally shows insecure the people are here in Pakistan while firing in a political rally killing six persons and injuring a congresswoman doesn’t get the news headlines. When a Muslim commits a crime in west, it is generalized on whole of the Muslim community like when Jack Straw labeled all the Pakistanis as rapists and when a non-Muslim commits a crime, his religion isn’t even mentioned with his name. Perhaps it enlightens us about the way this world is being run. If the west talks about the government of majority then it should also understand the sentiments of the people and what their desires are. People won’t come out of their homes to protest against price hike, non-availability of energy resources and poverty but they will always come out to stand for its religion. Protests against the Caricatures and recent protests are glaring examples to that. People of Pakistan or sub-continent, in large, are glued with the bond of Islam. The Khilafat Movement in 1920s was one of the biggest movements of sub-continent. The paradoxical principles of the west are not injectable in a society like Pakistan.

It talks about freedom and liberty but it is unable to appreciate the fact that one’s freedom will be at someone else’s cost. Salman Taseer’s expression was his freedom of speech but it was an obstruction for majority of the nation. While the west increases its efforts to secularize and modernize Pakistan, it has forgotten that it will only polarize the society and create a divide between the nation as seen before. Recent incident has underlined Pakistan as a state whose residents support Islam from its core and are strongly linked to the Islamic ideology. West, as always, has feared the expansion of Islam and the western media has again targeted Pakistan as the main culprit. My teacher at my university taught me to always stay idealistic and keep a positive approach but now I am unable to keep that approach. This world doesn’t operate in an idealistic manner. It is full of hypocrisy and the notion of principles is only for the oppressed. Assassination of a Governor has been turned into intellectual assassination of the whole nation.

The ruling elite will always oppress the ruled and the intelligentsia will only present what they think regardless of the desires of their readers. This article may be catharsis of a 22-year old university student, who hasn’t seen much in his life but one thing is for sure that it is the expression of the majority of Pakistan.

Self Imposed War

Published in Pak Observer on 14-11-2010
Published in Frontier Post on 14-11-2010

Pakistan has been the subject of intense scrutiny among the international powers for its role in the so-called war on terror. While Balochistan is burning under the flag of liberation, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is under the fiercest war ever fought in this area. The collateral damage, as said by our Government, has also expanded to the other two provinces as was experienced in the Thursday’s blast on CID’s office in Karachi and many other attacks both in Karachi and Lahore.

It all changed after the Lal Masjid (Red Mosque) debacle, when Pakistani troops ran over their own brothers on the behest of the then dictator Pervez Musharraf, Musharraf declared Lal Masjid people as defiant of writ of the state and rebellions but the irony is that after all the bloodshed of innocent kids and youngsters including girls (these girls were not ordinary ones, they had the Quran memorized in their hearts), Pakistani government released the Imam of the Masjid who started all this and even renovated the mosque. Only the name of mosque was changed but people still call it as Lal Masjid. One wonders why all this bloodshed was done when everything could have been settled so easily. Now it is the same Imam, once a rebellion and stockpiling weapons in his mosque and now delivers khutba (sermon) to a grand audience every Friday.

After this bloodshed, phenomenon of suicide blast on public places and general masses came on the horizon and wreaked havoc. Before that, these kinds of attacks were minimal and only targeted VVIP places or personalities. This provided a stimulus to the militants, fighting against Pakistan army on different fronts, and our enemies including our neighbors, with whom we have a hope for peace, took it as an advantage and took the insurgency to another level. We experienced attacks on almost every important place in this country from Marriott Hotel to ISI office in Peshawar, from Data Darbar and other Shrines to Cinema Houses.

Pakistani army is one of the best army in the world. There aren’t many armies who can control this king of insurgency, even the Russians, Americans and its allied forces are unable to control what is happening in Afghanistan, but when Pakistan Army put their foot on the gas, we secured Swat in a couple of weeks. Now Swat valley is open for general public and tourists but sadly the flood has closed the doors to Swat. The question is not about the strength of an army’s resolve to fight or to test its arsenal; it is about going to the war with a reason and having the whole country behind the armed forces. Our forces did secure Swat but the militants from Waziristan and other places have crept up and started to unfold their disappointment on the government in the form of suicide attacks.

One wonders, what was the reason we went to war? We never had any problem with tribal leaders. There was no issue of establishing the writ of the state in this area because we never had any writ in these areas since independence. They always had their own laws with a symbol of Pakistani Government in the form of political agents. Then what was the issue which made them hostile against their own state.

During the cold war, we bred them and taught them how to fight and armed them with all sorts of ammunition. We supported them for long enough and then we turned our backs on them and I can say that will full guarantee that if anyone would have been in their place would have done the same. Our alienation with them gave our arch rival a golden opportunity to disintegrate us and is still doing whatever she can.

Of course, our financial and ideological master United States compelled us to go to war against these people and how can we not adhere them. They have the supposed tendency to take us back to stone-age. Sometimes I feel that if we are so vulnerable that a state which is entangled with so many crises, stuck in two wars, can bomb us to stone-age then of what use is our military spending and budget? Why do we every year shine our tanks and missiles on 23rd March? Why do we broaden our chest when we say we are a nuclear state?

When we say that we had no other way to follow what US wanted us to then why do we call it our own war? Certainly this is not our war. What have we got in this war? A petty amount of cash from United States coupled with drone attacks? We are hired contractors who are fighting their own people and are highly underpaid and we don’t even have the audacity to ask them to increase our remuneration. The position, in which Pakistan is, if there was any other country with strong institutions and ideology, would have benefited a lot from this situation. Only the leverage of NATO supply trucks can easily end our disastrous economic run.

The old cliché of United States of winning the hearts and minds has proved to be counter-productive and it is their policies which are forcing the people to take up arms against their own countries. Even the students of Britain have started demonstrations against their own inhumane fee structure. The public disapproval of G-20 summit has said it all.

War on terror has spread so much terror around the world and will continue to spread if we don’t open our eyes. Our leaders and foreign policy makers have huge amounts of wealth and gigantic bungalows but there is no one to tell them that they are of no use if the state in which they live in is under insurgency. In this war OF terror, we have forgotten our brothers in Kashmir and have absolutely abandoned them. Pakistani army, which was born and bred to fight against India, has deviated from its objective. We have to realize the heavy price we are paying for this war. How much more casualties do we have to suffer for someone else’ war? We have to get rid of this self-imposed war and streamline our direction.

We have taken many u-turns but this u-turn of getting rid of this war could prove to be decisive for this country and the larger Muslim world.

(Writer is a student of international relations and a Government employee at Planning Commission)