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Emporium Current Essays

Emporium Current Essays

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A string of social, economic and political factors are interacting among themselves to
perpetuate conditions which keep Pakistan in a state of underdevelopment. To be crystal
clear over suck like issues we need to articulate them. First of all we face most
dominating social factor is Justice and other follow it.

Justice:

Economic activity can only progress in a framework of legal, economic and social
justice. Unless the rule of law prevails in a society, its members will not be sure that they
can enjoy the fruits of their own toil and efforts without let or hindrance. Without this
assurance no one would be willing to put in his best efforts. The history of the world
clearly shows that two systems will not survive in the long run: an economic system
which does not possess an inherent capacity for capital formation, and a political system
which is oppressive and not oriented towards the happiness and welfare of the people.

No challengers:

As any socio-political system is dynamic, not static, it is proae to both ameliorating and
deteriorating influences. The origin of these influences can be both internal and external.
Of course, a weak system, such as ours, which is based on a colonial heritage has
predominantly been exposed to deteriorating influences over the past fifty years, as a
result of which it now finds itself in articultt *• mortis,

A dynamic system survives by gathering an adequate response to every cr-aHenge which

is posed to it. Our national response to each chai age, instead of being united and
forceful, has been divisive and weak. Our national trait has been to sail out of each
difficulty by bSamisg each other. It is not that we have more than our share of bad peopie.
Our problem is that our good ones are no* good enough. They, in each moment of our
crisis, have failed to rise So the occasion.

Inconsistent economic policies:

There is a very high turn over in development thought, fuelled on the one hand by the
compulsion of the 'development elite' periodically to say something new and, on the
other, by the plain survival instinct of the international knowledge industry. Each
proponent is not merely interested in marking old ideas (with which the people are
familiar), work, but in propagating his own new ideas possibly under his own brand name
or catch phrase. There is a premium on theory. Theory-loaded new programmes and
projects are launched at great expense, while completed ones are run down for lack of
supervision or Financial support. This preoccupation with 'new ideas' cuts cold the
essential process of learning by experience. This attitude is the root cause of almost all of
Pakistan's economic problems.

The Government of Pakistan in the early 1970s, while adopting 'integrated rural
development' with all fanfare, purposefully delayed the introduction of a local
government structure. In fact, the system of Basic Democracies (originally outlines in an
ancient Indian text), which was the centre-piece of the Ayub era had actually started
working fairly well at least as far as agriculture was concerned, was duly demolished
by the next incumbent to President Ayub's seat. This pinpoints the great damage which
is routinely done in Pakistan. Nothing of your predecessor's deeds, good or bad, should
remain. Instead of making the required improvements in the institutional structure
and services associated with a bygone leader and thus taking the important step of
learning by experience, the new leader demolishes them all with one stroke of the pen,
under the compulsion of saying * or doing something new - political rhetoric at its worst.
A Persian saying depicts this attitude: 'Everyone who arrives, starts a new building.' Just
when one development approach or policy is succeeding, we shift to a completely
different approach. Just remember how our planning ideologue, who had spent almost a
decade in fattening the twenty-two capitalist families quickly sacrificed them all at
the altar of socialism, hopefully to please his new masters. This is pathetic indeed. To
save the situation now, we need saints, not self-seekers,

Flawed planning:

The planning machinery in Pakistan, being manned by most literate people, spends most
of its time drafting in good English for the high-ups. It is always under a great deal of
routine pressure, 322

Emporium Current Essays

allowing it little time to think and plan, keeping in view the national resource mix and the
needs of the people. Moreover, now it is a lone voice in a wilderness and has experienced
the futility of speaking truth to the powerful. Just to mention two current examples of bad
planning. Everywhere in Pakistan, our poorly-constructed inter-city roads are becoming
lined with factories, eating up good agricultural lands. From alt angles of resource and
urban planning, these industries should have been located in new industrial cities located
on uncukivable lands. In fact, we should have planned our industries on the Indus River,
making it highly navigable. Secondly, just look at our foily in basing our energy
production on gas and oil, when we have hydraulic resources in such abundance.
Politics supersedes economics:

Surprising as it may seem, the most comfortable urban living I have ever enjoyed was in
Beirut during 1980-82, right in the midst of a raging civil war. This was simply due to the
fat that the Lebanese and the Palestinians give more importance to economics than
politics. AH border skirmishes would cease each morning to let fresh fruits and
vegetables pass from the Christian East Beirut to the Muslim West Beirut. In contrast, we
give more importance to politics than economics and yet we are the worst of politicians,
having to sense of the dynamics of the world situation. Each time a changing world
makes our rigidly-held positions out of date, we try to 'save' ourselves by blaming others
for our predicament. Yet it is economics which is more important for us, both internally
and externally. Without learning from experience, we continued to use > political
arguments, like a drunkard uses the lamp-post for support,
* rather than for illumiifation.

Multiplex relationship:

In a traditional society like ours, the government lies outside the 'moral community' of
one village or caste. As a result, the public-government relationship is changed from that
of 'single interest', as in the advanced countries, into a 'multiplex' relationship. In a
traditional society, a villager tries to exploit an official or to avoid being exploited by him
by transforming the modern specialised relationship through a safarish or bribe. This
multiplex relationship also perverts the public administration in traditional societies in
that the administrators tend to gather around them their own cronies, fearing that unless
there is some sort of personal relationship, their immediate subordinates may not be loyal
to them. Thus, in Pakistan one is perturbed by the tendency of

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even the founders of modern welfare institutions, who try to recruit almost all the staff
from their own caste o?- area. This fragmentation of loyalties is indeed a crucial problem
of public administration in most developing countries. In other words, this represents a
low level of social discipline, which, in fact, is the root cause of corruption in traditional
societies.

Corruption:

i In the early 1960s, Professor W. W. Rostow had identified »

the five stages of economic growth, which push a traditional society over about a century
and half through the 'Pre-conditions', 'Take off and 'Drive to Maturity' to the heights of
the 'Age of High Mass Consumption.' This writer has identified five stages of corruption,
, which plunge a society to the lowest pit of human existence in about a quarter of a
century. These stages are:

(i)

the conventional kickback,

(ii) the damaging kickback,

(In) embezzlement and pilferage,

(iv) corruption in policy-making and

(v) when the honest sit back.

It is clear that we are in the fifth stage of this disease. In the fourth stage of corruption,
senior officials are influenced to make policies which cater to the interests of certain
groups rather than the nation as a whole. Their conceived policies sometimes put the
economy back by many decades. This stage paves the way for the next stage of
corruption, which eventually takes the society to its final destruction. As a result of naked
exploitation and complete disregard to the national interests by a large number of
officials, whatever honest officials remain, they get highly discouraged and their efforts
to speak truth are either ignored or strongly crushed. In such circumstances, the honest
officers lose interest in work and sit back in their chairs and a stage is clearly set for their
final doom. If corruption is to be curtailed, society will have to make the cost to the
officials of being corrupt very high. In Pakistan, corruption has spread rapidly because
while the gains of being corrupt were attractive, its costs were not felt by many. Thus, if
corruption is to be curtailed, society will have to reshuffle its price tags. We should also
know that it is quite hopeless to fight corruption, if there is not a high degree of personal
integrity a the top levels. 324

Education:

Emporium Current Essays

Without high quality education, no long-term national development plans could hope to
succeed. Our education system has gone from bad to worse and is deteriorating by the
day. Of course, there has been a private sector response to this situation through
providing a better quality but highly expensive education. This would create an added
problem of polarising our society still further, increasing the dangers of social turmoil.

Primacy of agriculture:

There is not a sadder story than that of our agricultural development. As you know, we
have one of the finest agricultural resources in the world, yet we have made a mess of
them because, our agriculture has, throughout remained in the stranglehold of stupid
politicians and incompetent generalist bureaucrats. Right at a time when our agriculture
was undergoing a major breakthrough in the late 1960s and early 1970s its momentum
was derailed through a change in policy focus, from the technology of the green
revolution to the poverty-oriented rural development. This was a fatal mistake and we
have still not recovered from it. India which was far behind us in 1970, has progressed far
ahead, while we have fallen far behind. But all culprits in Pakistan go scot-free. Even
recently, nobody has cared to inquire into the debacle of our famous basmati rice in the
world market. Indeed our agriculture has shown good progress -in some crops in some
years but its soul was destroyed in the early 1970s.

Any long-term plan of development of Pakistan's agriculture would require an adequate

and a stable framework of social justice for its farming population. I feel than our farmers
are still an oppressed and persecuted lot, facing a continuously deteriorating terms of
trade and a declining system of justice. To ameliorate their lot, the most import step that
the government can take is to foster an effective system of local government at the village
level, under which our rural people can become the masters of their own destiny and are
able to face the future with confidence. The big task before the government is how to
mobilise the creative energies of the rural masses in broadening the freedom of choice
beyond the barest necessities of iife. A quotation from an Iranian philosopher-king,
Ardashir would also be appropriate here: "There can be no power without an army, no
army without money, no money'without agriculture and no agriculture without justice."

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A messianic cast:

Although the Auran teaches us that Allah will not change the condition of a people unless
they change themselves, there is a strong messianic cast in Islam sustaining the hope of
its believers. Both the Shia and Sunni Muslims await the return of the Mahcli, who will
purify the religion and unite all the peoples under the reign of God's laws on earth. A
hope of divine intervention, instead of encouraging as towards greater deeds, continues to
lead us towards inaction and fatalism. What we have to do is to roll up our sleeves and to
put our heads down to finish to the end our big projects on the ground rather than keep on
living in our romantic dreams.