Some Stray Thoughts on Pakistan

Each dawn comes but once: It announces another opportunity to right the wrongs and build on the success of yesterday.

Like any other country, the sun rises in the morning in Pakistan. Nevertheless, this sun rises behind the dark thick clouds and its rays do not reach the mother earth where innocent people live, suffer—committing suicides, dumping their lived children or becoming the victims of terrorism, bad governance. It is painfully observed that the national dailies are publishing voluminous editions on non-issues but no column depicts public debate on real problems.

More than two thousand years ago, Diogenes walked down a dusty road in ancient Greece. According to the legend, as he walked, he carried a lighted lantern in his hand. He carried the lantern because even in broad daylight it wasn’t easy to find what he was looking for: an honest man.

Today, after all the passing centuries, in Pakistan one reads the morning newspapers or watches the TV news and wonders if Diogenes would find the search any easier. With so many signs of unethical behavior in the society at large, one may question if ethics have any place.

The absolute increase in population in Pakistan, coupled with such trends as urbanization and greater mobility clearly presents serious threats. If the current population growth rate of Pakistan continued for the next 130 years, its population would be equal to that of the whole world today. Needless to say, this will not happen. Either its birth rate will drop or its death rate will rise. Somehow the growth rate has to stop.

Some foreign industries are growing more competitive than their Pakistani counterparts. For the Pakistan as a nation to be competitive, however, it is not required that all Pakistani companies remain competitive in all areas. It however does mean that Pakistan’s business and entrepreneurs must be able to take advantage of opportunities offered by economic developments in other countries to move into other product lines.

Good infrastructure services are essential to achieve economic growth and improve the quality of life. But for Pakistan, despite improvements in access the quantity and quality of services are well below what is demanded.

The state of education in Pakistan is depressing. Today it simply cannot compete with even third-rate countries in standard indicators of academic achievement. Weak curricula and discipline have guaranteed educational failure for tens of millions of our children. In its most extreme manifestations learning literally has come to a halt. This is not to criticize present or past governments. All the same, the nation should look at itself and conclude that something must be done. It is not, however, that the government should reform education fundamentally. Real reforms come from the people.

The health sector requires offensive for offering an inadequate remedy for the serious problems of an outdated and basically unsound system. People must be offered a vision of a revitalized healthcare system that provides incentives for increased quality and technological innovation. While at the same time, reducing costs and uncertainty. Pakistanis today need a system that gives them control over healthcare decisions, while encouraging them to set aside the resources they need to purchase this care.

The poverty rate in Pakistan is increasing fast. Economic expansion can only nullify this trend. Any welfare policy cannot conquer poverty, nor can government alone. To rid Pakistan of poverty, there must be continued economic growth, deregulation, devolution of power, smaller government, elimination of policies that discourage self-improvement, and a stronger focus on education. The importance of the family in keeping poverty at bay may now be widely accepted, but programs are also needed to strengthen the family.

It is hard for Pakistan to win a successful war on poverty when it is so hard to identify the “enemy.” Even leaving aside such complicated notions as “relative” versus “absolute” poverty, the measurement of poverty is a crude process. The root cause of this defect is that the baseline official poverty rate is badly flawed measurement of what is generally understood to be poverty. It is based on reported cash income. Thus, unreported income is not measured. There has to be consumption standard in place of the income standard, quantity and quality of the food, housing, clothing, and other essential items needed to keep a family just cost of obtaining these items locally would then be the benchmark for determining whether the family’s income was below the poverty level.

Any system of laws that is too complex or expensive for people to understand and use, does not deliver justice. This increasingly has become the case with Pakistan’s legal system. It lacks increased use of mediation, conciliation, mini-trials, and where appropriate, arbitration. Decision makers in Pakistan should think about the dilemma to ensure that access to justice is available to all. Efforts to seek alternatives to litigation throughout the legal system need to be forged.

Terrorists, attacking non-combatant targets in Pakistan, threaten the society today. Their fundamental threat is to innocent citizens, social stability and ultimately, to the legitimacy of the elected regime. The threat from terrorism is growing. Terrorists are being organized, better equipped, and more professional than they were some years ago. Modernity should be used in countering terrorism. Multilateral treaties should also be worked out for effective handling of the threat.

By defining these main items designed to spur Pakistan’s progress, prosperity and competitiveness, the Pakistani intelligentsia can suggest solutions, alternatives, innovative ideas and utilitarian actions to help achieve prosperity. It can recommend means for increasing nation’s ability to sell more overseas through increased productivity. It can imply more efficient production techniques in business through new technology, better methods of industrial organization, cheaper sources of capital goods, or more efficient labor. Through increased productivity standards of living will rise, consumer choice will increase, and more opportunities for well-paying jobs will become available. Similarly, solutions can be recommended to miscellaneous problems that are degenerating the vitals of our national life.

Beyond doubt, the resources of knowledge, experience and expertise if harnessed and suggested means for the revitalization of the dormant energies in all sectors of human endeavor, Pakistan can emerge as a land of opportunities and haven of peace. Asif J. Mir, Organizational Transformation

Advice to Defectors

These days political defection is on the up and up. People of mark from significant and not so significant political organizations are falling away and joining Muslim League (N) or the PPP. General public identify these turncoats as opportunists and lotas (ewer), I don’t. I hold them in high esteem, as they are intelligent people who have a nodding acquaintance with trends in power corridors. They know and rightly so, that in number games, or for this or that reason, PML (N) or the PPP will remain in power. I dedicate this column to such wheeler-dealers.

I feel it pertinent and this is what I can do to equip the defectors with a patrimony—I can tip them off with some rough and ready thoughts. I want them to climb the ladder and go up in life and not get lost in milling crowds at the bottom rung.

You’ve rightly seized the opportunity, Mr. Defector. Your decision to turn your coat is indeed to suit the times. What could the Duke of Savoy do expect to turn his coat by turns when his lands passed into the hands of the invading French army first and back into the hands of the Spanish army? No one is patted as much as a political apostate. In politics, as on a sick bed, one tosses from side to side in the hope of getting better comfort.

Pedants might tell that success is for those who work hard; are courageous, tenacious, so and so forth. Wrong—absolutely wrong. Through and through, these are hidden landmines to destroy. Success comes only to those who circumvent these impediments by taking shortcuts. Concentrate all your faculties on one point—your success. The guy who cuts a wide path rarely cuts a long one.

You might have been told to abominate the filthy lure by some fox that failed to reach the grapes, or by those who want to keep it all to themselves. Do not build treasures in heaven, for they in heaven, I am told, have no need for cash, but live on their creditworthiness. Joining the ruling party is the right place to be wealthy. At the very least your bank loans will be written off and you also stand a good chance of becoming a minister.

Now that you’re in the ruling party, you must know that the two cannot go together—man and honesty; one gets broken. The Greek god Hermes was patron of both trade and of thieves.

Your decision to defect to the ruling lot and that too from the front door is hunky dory. All the good horses have been whipped away. Today’s insects are tomorrow’s stars. You only have to remember the rules of the game.

Invoke curses on the politicians who are without power and have been thrown out of the ring by the referee. You must find a sycophant to become a sycophant yourself. In the West dogs that look into the eyes are not allowed at public places. Win the ruling class with flattery and sycophancy. This will qualify you for a minister’s slot. And, remember, more people worship the rising sun than the setting. To his dog, every man is Napoleon. That is why dogs are so popular among the gentry. In today’s wheeling dealing people need those around them who wag their tails.

Stoop as low as you want if it is to pick up a prize (a slot of a minister or any other public office), for he that humbles himself shall be exalted here and hereafter. Everyone has his ego and vanity. There is nothing people need at the top so much as nourishment for their self-esteem. Flattery and sycophancy have always been popular with those in power and authority. When the Czar had a cold, all Russia sneezed, they say.

To pose big is half the way to success. To hide your crimes is the other half. Try to trump up some connections with Uncle Sam. You can learn from some cabinet ministers who rear such connections. Who else would know this better than General Pervez Musharraf how to swap country’s sovereignty? Go play golf with him and take lessons.

The successful politician surrounds himself with all status symbols—(un)attractive attire, mobile telephone, starched shalwar qameez, and a security guard with deadly gun. Keep in mind that is the way to impress. If you have status, what you say becomes important. Play the game on a grand scale. Keep an imaginary appointment with the man in uniform, the President or the Quaid of PML (N).

And pay court to the harem of the sultans in intelligence agencies. Today they make or unmake the politicians. Be useful to them for they obtain more often favors by your judicious efforts. You must be sweet of tongue and ready with a smile. And never make the mistake of making your demands modest. Always inflate them.

These are the days of specialization. You must try to become an expert, specialized in politics in some innovative ways. Old ways of getting kickbacks are now risky. Invent new ways of making politics as money spinning. Only sometimes men come by the name of genius in the same way that certain insects come by the name of centipedes, not because they have a hundred feet but because most people can’t count beyond fourteen.

These are the days of publicity. Publicity gives you the outsize figure. Send a dog in spaceship and he will return a celebrity. You will be a notability if you win media publicity on hollow slogan mongering. You will learn such flags of convenience from your new Party. Remember, when a goose lays an egg, she just waddles off as if she were ashamed of it. When a hen lays an egg she calls on heaven and earth to witness it by her cackles. Be a successful politician and thus a hen. You must cackle loud even if there is no egg. That is the norm today. (www.asifjmir.com)