Publicity hungry politicians

The prsident, prime minster, cabinet ministers, legislators and politicians visit victims of crimes only to take the prize of cheap publicity. These unpopular leaders are in the running for photo sessions and disaster tourism. Pictures, indubitably, speak a thousand words, but when the picture is of something awful, it can speak a thousand curses. Unconscious from the cynicism and self-respect imbalance, which they are causing thus, it is a nasty bit of work that visibly demonstrates subjacency of humanist ethics and obstruction in relief work and medical care.

This is, of course, empty leadership, and it marks a sad decline. Such leaders fail to apt to become household names because they failed to accomplish something great, something galvanizing. Now, these leaders know that they can achieve this perch by pumping us full of vitriol about how all the problems we face as the result of their unskillful leadership. Their publicity smokescreen attempts people to paying attention. They do not talk about the complex problems that confront us today. Instead they distill these complex issues into sound bites that get their swollen faces on TV.

These talentless celebrities get a recognition boost from fronting situations. It's the way of the world today. They think, and irrationally so, that there is no such thing as a catastrophe so dire that it can't be turned into an opportunity for self-promotion.

Publicity-hungry opportunists bank on the acts of inhumanity or calamity to boost their own image. People have a pretty feeble grasp of commercial reality and the mechanics of marketing. If they were good Muslims and true leaders, they would have gone about doing good anonymously, trusting that God would know what they were up to and would reward them in His own good time and in due course.

The pseudo-leader is a parasite. He nourishes himself on others suffering. He exists by satisfying the mob’s voracious appetite for excuses and easy solutions. If there is no easy solution for the complex problems in our country, the pseudo-leader creates one. In a calm baritone he talks about reparations. Such leadership guides only how to lead for its own interests are not leaders of the people. Such leaders need to be led.

So much have several organizations grown publicity hungry that they do not hesitate to send a press note to newspaper offices for even routine activities. They fail to mention that by so doing, they only fulfill their social responsibilities by doing some social work. Would it not be better if such organizations did a few things without a desire for the media publicity?

The selfish leaders attempt to lead others for their own gain and detriment of others. They believe that life is a point driven, zero-sum game, with winners and losers. They encourage others to be losers in the game of life so that they can collect all the spoils for themselves. Selfish leaders are the opposite of true leaders, who are driven by integrity.

In Islam, when we give alms, we ought not sound any trumpet. The hypocrites do this so that they may be praised forgetting that when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing.

Contemporary leaders in Pakistan today, both at the national and local levels, lack characteristics associated with great leaders. Our society grievously suffers from a leadership crisis. This is having a disastrous effect on the society. It just keeps us stuck on a dead-end street of self-righteous indignation.

Muhammad (pbuh) and his companions, who inspired a reverence for life; Quaid-e-Azam, who lead a nation to freedom; Allama Iqbal, who demanded blood, sweat and tears from his people; and Abdul Sattar Edhi and Imran Khan, who rallied their people to great and humane causes.

Where are their successors? Why have we not had any true leaders in the government in generations? Why are there no potential presidents, prime ministers and ministers who inspire or even excite us? Where, for God's sake, have all the leaders gone?

It is absolutely necessary that elected though, the self-centered leaders be removed from any leadership positions as soon as possible. No member is performing in the best interest of the people for lacking necessary leadership qualities.

If today’s leaders failed to become good leaders, their impact is getting disastrous. Just as polluted water is as bad, or worse, than no water, so selfish leadership is as bad, or worse, than no leadership The great need of the day is for intelligent leadership. We need to explore how we can discover if and where we are called to lead as well as how we can begin developing our leadership ability.

It is imperative to replace gossips, rhetoric and speculations with substantive discussions and innovative ideas to build a pluralistic democratic society. Such discussions need to be led by political scientists, economists, sociologists and scholars who are willing to build consensus based on a scientific framework. To arrive at this stage, we need to first nurture a new generation of great leaders at the community level.

Recognizing the fundamental need for regime change in Pakistan, it is imperative to identify the next generation of great leaders at a young age, nurture their talents and provide them with open access to educational and career opportunities. To this end, the current generation of leaders needs to embrace change and retire with grace. This particularly applies to the leadership level of political incumbents and the opposition. Asif J. Mir, Organizational Transformation

Making a Dead Set at Corruption

Corruption is an insidious plague that has a wide range of corrosive effects on society. It undermines democracy and the rule of law, leads to violations of human rights, distorts markets, erodes quality of life, and allows organized crime, terrorism and other threats to human society to flourish. As defined by Transparency International: “Corruption is the abuse of entrusted power for private gain.” According to Kofi Annan, “Corruption hurts the poor disproportionately—by diverting funds intended for development, undermining a government’s ability to provide basic services, feeding inequality and injustice, and discouraging foreign investment and aid.”

The good news is that future of corruption is not so bright it will not entirely finish though.

No country is entirely free of corruption. Efforts to fight corruption encourage transparency and accountability, thanks to an increased understanding of corruption's social and economic costs. There is the need for expanding the econometric framework, as well as to more general future research directions and policy implications in the field of governance.

Corruption is principally a governance issue, a failure of institutions and a lack of capacity to manage society by means of a framework of social, judicial, political and economic checks and balances. Good governance and globalization (at both the country as well as at the city level) do matter for performance in terms of access and quality of delivery of infrastructure services.

Corruption is deeply embedded in the political culture and poverty of Pakistan. Regulatory bodies are particularly vulnerable to corruption as they have the power to make key decisions on profit-making activities. Corrupt regulatory bodies can thus dangerously impede economic development.

Discretion creates more opportunities for corruption than where regulatory requirements are laid out through clear, precise and formal rules. Debate about corruption tends to focus almost exclusively on the receivers of corruption, rather than the purveyors. Corruption is alive and well and living in myriads of places. Bribery is simply the way business is done in Pakistan.

Within Pakistan's political dynamics, corruption figures as a very critical element. Prevalence of corruption in various political regimes has been the main cause of their downfall. The incumbents have placed accountability and the anti-corruption drive very high on its agenda in form of NAB its operational approach is rather controversial.

Corruption increases the number of capital projects undertaken and tends to enlarge their size and complexity. The result is that, paradoxically, some public investment can end up reducing a country’s growth because, even though the share of public investment in gross domestic product (the total of all goods and services produced in a country in a given year) may have risen, the average productivity of that investment is dropped.

For a private enterprise, getting a contract to execute a project, especially a large one, can be very profitable. Therefore, managers of these enterprises may be willing to offer commission to politicians who help them win the contract. Conversely, in many cases the act of bribery may not start with the enterprise but with the officials who control the decisions. It is apparently impossible to win a government contract in Pakistan without first paying a bribe. Interestingly, the laws of certain major industrial countries regard commissions paid by domestic enterprises to foreign politicians as not only legal but also tax deductible.

In some of these phases, a strategically placed high-level official or elected leader can manipulate the process to select a particular project. He can also tailor the specifications of the design to favor a given enterprise by, for example, providing inside information to that enterprise at the time of issuance of tender.

The enterprise that pays the commission rarely suffers from the payment of the bribe, since it is fairly simple to recover that cost. First, if corrupt officials of winning the bidding competition assure it, the enterprise can include the cost of the commission in its bid. Second, it can reach an understanding with the influential official that the initial low bid can be adjusted upward along the way, presumably to reflect modifications to the basic design. Third, it can reduce its spending on the project by the amount of the bribe by skimping on the quality of the work performed and the materials used. Fourth, if the contract is stipulated in a cost-plus fashion, the enterprise can recover the cost of the commission by overpricing.

The first step towards tackling corruption is preventing it. In attempting to prevent the laundering of proceeds of corruption mechanisms need to set up to review suspicious transactions, and analyze financial information.

Transparency and accountability in matters of public finance must also be promoted, and specific requirements established for the prevention of corruption, in particularly critical areas of the public sector, such as public procurement.

Citizens have the right to expect a high standard of conduct from their public servants. They also have to participate in preventing public corruption. For these reasons there is a need to actively encourage and promote the involvement of non-governmental and community based organizations, as well as, other elements of civil society, and to raise public awareness of corruption and what can be done about it.

There is a requirement for the prevention of corruption in the judiciary. Decision-making should be entrusted to committees rather than individuals. Although this adds to the cost of regulation, it may eventually save money by facilitating mutual monitoring and accountability.

New attitudes, better financial systems, prosecution of the guilty, better management of diamonds and real accountability to the people … this is the agenda for change. In taking it forward, the leading role must obviously be taken by the people and Government. But tackling corruption effectively requires a real focus, coordinated action and shared responsibility. Everyone’s energies must be thrown behind this anti-corruption strategy. It is the key to a better future for the people of Pakistan. (www.asifjmir.com)

The Brain Drain

The future trends explain that the nanotechnology will elongate life spans and thus the West and the Japan is going to have enlarged older population and diminishing youth. To fill in the demographic gap those countries will hire skilled youth from Asia. This will intensify the stream of brain drain from Pakistan. This calls for use of strategic human management and economic reasons as key actions needed to meet the challenges of the 21st century.

The term brain drain was popularized in the 1960s with the loss of skilled labor-power from a number of poor countries, notably India. Of particular concern was the emigration of those with scarce professional skills, like doctors, engineers and management scientists, who had been trained at considerable expense by means of taxpayers' subsidies to higher education.

UNESCO defines the brain drain as an odd form of scientific exchange among states because a movement in one direction that inevitably flows to developed countries characterizes it.

Pakistan is suffering from two main problems, one is poverty, which is increasing day by day and the other is increasing rate of crime. Both are result of unemployment. The wrong distribution of wealth due to wrong policies and over-population has made the situation even worst. This paved a way for skilled citizens to go abroad especially, the educated youth.

Other reasons include: they feel that they have a better future, a greater security; will be better off financially, and they feel that they and their children will get better education.

The receiving countries are the winners while the sending countries are the losers. The receiving countries include the US, England, Australia and West Germany. The sending countries include beside others, Pakistan. The rulers of Pakistan who remain indifferent to prevailing problems, and fail to respond to the employment problem creatively, contributes to brain drain.

Pakistanis who completed their studies in Europe and the US are not returning to Pakistan. Since one in three Pakistani professionals will like to live outside Pakistan, Pakistani universities are actually training one third of their graduates for export to the developed nations. We are thus operating one third of Pakistani universities to satisfy the manpower needs of Great Britain and the United States. Stated differently, the Pakistani education budget is nothing but a supplement to the American or British education budgets. In essence, Pakistan is giving developmental assistance to the wealthier western nations, which makes the rich nations richer and the poor nations poorer.

It is the best and brightest that can emigrate, leaving behind the weak and less imaginative. We cannot achieve long-term economic growth by exporting our human resource. In the new world order, people with knowledge drive economic growth. We talk a lot of poverty alleviation in Pakistan. But who is going to alleviate the poverty? Or the uncreative bureaucracy that created poverty? Hypothetically, the most talented should lead the people, create wealth and eradicate poverty and corruption.

In theory, overseas Pakistanis are morally obliged to return back home. In truth, it is unrealistic thinking that that a Pakistani professional will resign from his $60,000 a year job to accept a $3,000 a year job in Pakistan. A more meaningful question will be to ask: What measures can be taken to entice Pakistanis leaving abroad to return home and what can be done to discourage those professionals in Pakistan to remain in Pakistan?

The brain-drain seriously affects the quality and delivery of public and private services there are two obvious solutions (a) make it worthwhile for highly-trained professionals to stay and (b) replace them with competent locals at a rate as fast or faster than their departure brain train.

Another solution is to devise strategies of brain gain. These can take the development of a brain gain network. Pakistan is not effectively encouraging the use of its diaspora in contributing to development at home (e.g., 80 per cent of recent foreign investment in the People's Republic of China came from overseas Chinese). The brain gain network can help in the promotion of joint research and teaching posts, the use of medical specialists in periodic return visits, short-term training assignments and even systematic professional and research collaboration on electronic networks. These could be effective ways of harnessing the skills of some of the distinguished scientists, medics, artists and educators with Pakistani origins living abroad.

With good employers, attractive working conditions, improved telecommunications and the entrepreneurial climate in India today, young professionals are moving back and strengthening the economic sector. Then IT professionals in India are quite often paid in foreign currency at international rates to prevent brain drain and hence exports of Indian software industry is now in the range of $10 billion.

Pakistan’s bureaucracy, rigid hierarchies and frustrating professional fragmentation also pushed people away. Pakistan is a mess, a haze of over-regulated and overcomplicated bureaucracy smothering the rare flames of true entrepreneurial brilliance.

Lack of opportunities compelled me to leave Pakistan in early 80s. Since then I acquired not just high education from prestigious universities of Europe and America, my practice also earned global recognition with rain of medals and achievement awards. Now that I have voluntarily come back, rather timorous of my credentials, government officials are keeping me at bay. The President House vainly tried to get me Consulting jobs at two federal departments. It failed for I was undesirable most probably due to my high credentials. Government managers who have utterly unsuccessful in planning for even paltry matters such as payment of utility bills only creates road blocks for such Pakistanis who want to come back. Thus in a society comprising sycophants and greedy relatives, I am twiddling with no job in hand. Rhetoric aside, one question dominates my mind: does Pakistan have any repatriation policy for such Pakistanis who are globally recognized and who are capable of offering prescriptions for prevailing ills? (www.asifjmir.com)

Perishing from Earth

As in the experience of all other civilizations it can be with us if we do not recognize the principles for survival. If we failed to learn from history and recognize the future trends we will eventually go back into darkness from whence we came, and we the people will perish from the earth.

If you retrace your thoughts back to where there were those old civilizations, some five or six thousand years ago, the Egyptians, you will find that they were very intelligent, highly advanced but through corruption, selfishness, prejudice and moral degradation went into the debris of ancient history. We, in this advanced civilization, are representing similar predilections, can also follow the same destiny and go back into the dark-age from whence we came.

Egyptian civilization has been forgotten. It went down, not just mentally, scientifically, intellectually, but also physically, to let us see and know that those who go down mentally and do not alter their ways also go down physically.

After the Independence, we lost our vision, transformed into one of the corrupt nations worldwide, all the nasty crimes once akin to the West are now dominating our national life, and last but not the least each individual of Pakistan seems to be on the looting binge. Instead of contributing our role in nation building, we started pillaging our own land. When we are nurturing the same traits that caused extinction of Egyptian Civilization, why then our destiny would be any different?

The societies that sustain physically, mentally, and otherwise are those which undergo a series of divergences in development, much like the branching of a tree. The dynamic people are those who are responsive to issues, essentially open, fast paced, balanced, and tend to survive and prosper on a fairly reliable basis. Problems come to them, but they usually manage to work them out.

The struggling society of Pakistan, contrarily, outdoes the people in narrow areas of endeavor from time to time, and becoming more retarded in overall development as time goes by.

Outwardly, we are a developing society. But like a muscular athlete with a terminal cancer, a disease is eating away at us from the inside. A well-balanced nation cannot be destroyed from the outside until it falls first from the inside.

No matter how well we might arm ourselves against enemies outside our borders, we need to primarily identify the more detrimental enemy. And this greatest enemy is none else but us, who place destructive devices inside our destructive minds, causing us to morally implode, like an imploding building.

Ever since independence in 1947, we have experienced a complete abandonment of our sense of good and evil. The true crisis of our time has nothing to do with monetary troubles, unemployment, or terrorism. The true crisis has to do with the fact that we have lost our way.

If you drop a frog into a pot of boiling water, the frog will immediately jump out. But if you place the frog in a pot of lukewarm water and slowly turn up the heat, the relaxed frog will just swim around, growing accustomed to the increasing warmth until it eventually boils to death. This is what is happening to us and our cultural decay. It is a gradual process that slowly dulls our senses until what was once seen as unacceptable somehow becomes acceptable.

After the death of Quaid-e-Azam, we have allowed corruption to creep into our society as a way of life. Thus, we have become desensitized to corruption and our moral judgment is impaired. Even worse, at each step along the way, we eliminated Islamic injunctions from our lives and culture.

What will remain of civilization and history if the accumulated influence of Islam, both direct and indirect, is eradicated from literature, art, practical dealings, moral standards, and creativeness in the different activities of mind and spirit?

Consequently, a flood of immorality, corruption and violence has entered into our national life, and we have unfortunately been recognized as a culture of death from the womb to the streets. Many of our young people have no concept of the true spirit of Islam and are connoting falsely to satisfy their political agendas. Hence, many are tragically engaged in dying or killing the innocents. A sense of hopelessness prevails, a feeling of fear surrounds.

We have forgotten our true nature, divinity, because scientifically it cannot be proved! We are ignorant of true purpose of life. Values like solidarity, natural love, forbearance, compassion, generosity, and altruism do not find any place independent of an 'individual'.

The culture shows signs of degeneration into lawlessness, disease, and want on one hand, and affluence and sense gratification of wanton degree on the other. With this decline in cultural values, ethical values are also eroded. Not one particular field is afflicted with this 'virus of corruption'; all departments of human interaction show the same trend. It is difficult to find an isolated island of purity in the sea of corruption all around.

Ethics is the reflection of cultural health of the society. In course of evolution of human societies, man creates progressive cultural and moral ethos. But then a stage comes when cultural growth slows down for want of fresh ideas. Consequently ethics also remain a mere shadow of its own previous glory. However, when matter is worshiped as supreme and privileges are sought after, ethical decline is not a surprise. The remedy lies in adding spiritual dimension to existing culture and in course evolving a new moral and ethical code for coming generations. Time is still not gone. We can learn lessons from Egyptian civilization or else face extinction. Choice is only ours. (www.asifjmir.com)