Lahore: Gracious but Frustrating

We have already entered into the 21st century with the nefarious bag and baggage containing nauseating political environment and the stomach-churning poverty. While we read about great strides the Asian Tigers are making in economic development and prosperity, Pakistan continues to lurch around with moral degeneration and lust for guzzling the vitals of nationhood. As we hear that China and India are going to emerge as economic giants in this century, the up-and-coming trends illustrate the murky future of Pakistan.

Having toured more than forty countries, I can rightfully claim to be a globe trotter. And I have traveled to China so repeatedly that I should be eligible to call it my second home. In one of the trips with wife, an incident made me embarrassed quite a bit. The story runs thus: While in Shanghai, before having a nap my wife cursorily glanced a tourism magazine provided by the hotel where we were staying. A story attracted her attention, which was about Lahore that happened to be our birthplace and the heart of Pakistan. Although it did not fall short of truth in any way, reading in a foreign magazine about our eroding national character really saddened us. Indeed it was morally wrong my wife ripped off the article penned by Josephine Bow that unfortunately reflected the dominating way of life in Pakistan. I am sharing some of its excerpts as follows:

“ . . . . Languishing on the sidelines instead of jostling in the mainstream, Lahore is a gracious but frustrating relic of an era long gone. The economic boom and accompanying quickening of pace that has swept over Asia—from Delhi to Seoul—like a giant tidal wave during the past two decades seems to have stopped short at the gates of Pakistan.

Beset by corrupt politicians and businessmen—often one and the same—government policies seesaw wildly depending upon which interest group squawks the loudest. Recent years have seen revolving door of governments, resulting in a sense of helplessness and inertia at the individual level. The oft-heard lament is what can one man do against the system?

Lahore looks as if it’s becoming a sleepy town. Don’t expect to get anything done in a hurry. For one thing, nobody of responsibility gets to their offices before 11 AM and secretaries never know where their bosses are. Punctuality is not a widespread practice—arriving within an hour either side of the appointed time seems to be considered acceptable.

For local businessmen, the inability of government to formulate stable policies has generated an ‘every man for himself and the rest be damned’ attitude. Young professionals educated abroad despair that their hard-earned degrees and legitimate career choices are looked upon with disdain. Instead it’s those who can make money in the quickest and often most illegal manner who are admired.

What is probably more difficult to adjust is the lack of a developed work ethic or observance of basic business practices. Here everyone’s a director or manager giving orders, but there’s little follow-up. Be prepared to insist if you want to get anything done.

In the sluggishness to embrace the global economy, ironically even the country’s strengths can become weaknesses. Take, for example, the fact that Pakistan is self-sufficient in cotton. Lahore, in the heart of the rich Punjab cotton-growing region, is considered by many to be the country’s future textile capital. Yet despite occasional pockets of progress, overall export growth in value-added items has been disappointing.

Bangladesh, on the other hand, registered tremendous growth in garment exports. The analysis is that, with its weak local raw-materials base, manufacturers were exposed early to overseas business practices as they learned to deal with fabric suppliers in Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong. Rich from the earnings and experience amassed over the past 15 years, large Bangladeshi garment groups are now opening carefully thought-out textile units.

As Pakistan enters yet another period of political uncertainty, it’s difficult to say whether conditions will improve in the near future.

Lahoreans are considered to be great talkers. Indeed residents of nearby Sialkot, the world’s manufacturing capital for soccer balls and martial-arts uniforms, explain their city became globally competitive because it hosts no other extracurricular activities—not the case with Lahore, which boasts theatre, art galleries and other cultural pastimes.

Horse drawn carts, motorcycles, trucks and every other imaginable form of vehicular transport make their way in a confused shambles on often unpaved and potholed roads—a nightmare during the rainy season.

Driving is very much local style and no one respects lanes or direction, for that matter. Watch out for three-wheel scooters crossing lane dividers and careening wildly in the wrong direction. . . . . ”

Baba Bulleh Shah has truthfully said: truth inflames. Initially the critique about our national attitude caused us noticeable irritation. Just the same, when we recuperated rationalism we recognized that the writer put across the harsh facts quite rightly.

Past civilizations, nations and peoples perished due to lack of purpose, nationhood and when self-centered attitude dominated the national purpose. Today Pakistan also stands face-to-face with such erosion. The value system is under serious attack—not by someone from outside, but internally at individual level. This is simply contrary to norms of freedom.

Pakistan must learn from past and future. It must change its ways to shun disaster. It must recreate itself. The confronting challenge calls for a leadership capable of eliciting the best out of the people. Traditional top down notions of leadership are giving way to concepts of attitudinal reforms, social transformation, and collective restructuring. Pakistani society desperately needs to look into the future and see the nation not as it is … but as it can become. A choice nevertheless lies ahead: either to change or become a French song once sung by swan. Asif J. Mir, Organizational Transformation

Cutting out the future of Lahore

After a process of evolution our local government system has devolved power at the doorsteps of local communities and as part of this arrangement, Lahore today has an elected Nazim (mayor) and elected council. Lahore is a wonderful city of a great historical interest. Not just the intellectual grandeur of the city is charismatic but also the well-endowed cultural heritage. In the same breath, owing to its fast track urbanization, Lahore lends out and out challenges and opportunities to the Lahore District Nazim, Amer Mahmood. He needs to look and see how to invent Lahore’s future. Implicitly and explicitly, it is high time for making local democracy work for the residents of this old city.

For making Lahore a futuristic city, it needs leadership in action—leadership that anticipates change and harnesses it to positive advantage. The city requires strength in diversity, partnership, and citizen participation, which Amer Mahmood must offer. He needs to innovate, create and lead. The city must have a destiny to sustain. The challenge is to make change our friend, not the enemy.

Amer Mahmood must be deeply involved in making and reviewing policy for transforming Lahore into a city of future. It will work best if he also respects the roles, expertise, and goals that elected and appointed officials bring to city governance. They should sit down together and develop relationships that work in this term. It is also time for the city to take greater responsibility for its economic future.

He should work with the Lahore Chamber of Commerce & Industry to explore how City Government can more effectively participate and partner in shaping Lahore’s economic future. The two institutions can focus on substantial issues and work together on a strategy for change and reform.

For making Lahore a modern city it should welcome the information age while providing ways for people to come together. Besides technology initiatives Amer Mahmood should push off policy initiatives and thus help people connect. This should create opportunities and places for people to gather. The city of Lahore to prosper in the 21st Century needs to improve its capacity to deal successfully with the new international context. The most successful will be closely connected to the rest of the world—through trade, transportation, technology, education, arts and culture. Indeed, the future promises dramatic and significant life style choices for exercise and connection.

Civics of the 21st Century will be more about relationships between people than about structures of government. The key is to get people talking and working together across the boundary lines that traditionally divide and diminish a community.

We expect from Amer Mahmood to offer the leadership that reaches from neighborhood to region to global. There are important and timely opportunities for thinking and acting outside of the box.

We need a new approach to transit in Lahore. Increasing traffic congestion is a fact of life. We cannot build our way out of the problem. Any solution must include improved rapid transit.
Amir Mahmood should plan a process to design a transit system for people to ride. He should develop a passion in making busses work for everyone.

He should also create places worthy of our affection. Indeed, he can create such places. He must take decisive steps for making Lahore as the business, governmental, cultural, and educational center of the 21st Century. For that matter he must take deliberate steps today to shape the future of tomorrow. The best way to do it is to invent future. He must go for it, search out and use the concepts of smart growth and new urbanism.

His task should heave in “leadership in the key of e,” that is, enterprise, environment, education, E-commerce and E-government, and eccentricity. These are the tools by which he can bring benefit to that which is most important—the people—not an extension of global uniformity, but a unique people, in a unique place and made unique by their collective endeavor.

We need a new – a different – local government to continue the task of modernizing Lahore—a new role for a new century. A role that challenges the sense of inevitable decline that has hung over local government in the previous years and provides local people and their representatives with new opportunities.

With strong leadership, the best days of cities lie ahead. So be it for Lahore. Lahore in coming days is an exciting, diverse, urban, and a futuristic city—a good place to live as well as to work and do business. It also is an exciting time for all those involved in the art and politics of city building. The right principles and the right leadership, together we can make a difference in Lahore.

Amer Mahmood should be more than a ribbon-cutter. Although he does plenty of those over and above his prolific role, he must also heighten further his attention on community safety, cleaning up the city, and making the environment business friendly. He should be involved in determining the vision for the city, not in terms of day-to-day administration, but as the key figure in deciding policy and direction for growth.

To be a good Nazim of pride, Amer Mahmood must articulate the vision of a better place and future; must lay down the challenge to constantly do better – to never rest on laurels – then cheer the community along as they work at delivering that vision; the economy, jobs, life-long education, transport, public safety, health, well-being and always, the environment.

He must reach for this vision using the tools of the 21st Century; even anticipating tools not yet even made. We don’t want the smokestacks of yesterday, we want the technology of tomorrow. Lahore is ready for a progressive city that focuses on the future. He should reach beyond what he knows to grasp and that might be a bit ahead of its time. Asif J. Mir, Organizational Transformation