About four decades ago, I was teaching at the Punjab University. In those days, one used to witness a lot of youthful energy and hope across all segments of the university population. Forty years later, that energy had dissipated and the hope has turned into hopelessness about Pakistan’s future. Today, any assessment about Pakistan’s future leads to a cleavage between the pessimists and the optimists. Given this cleavage, the essential question begging an answer remains “can we rebuild the peoples’ Pakistan?” This article is an attempt to reach an answer to this question.
People like Mr Stephen Cohen of the Brookings Institute, an acknowledged scholar and authority on Pakistan had in his recent book described some scenarios about the future of Pakistan in the next 5-7 years. Doubtless, he had presented a very balanced picture of where we stand today and what could be some of the possibilities for our state.
According to Mr Cohen “Pakistan is marinated in crisis.” And, that our important institutions including key state enterprises, if not collapsing, are critically sick and should be in the ICU. Some estimates suggest that three state enterprises are incurring a cumulative loss of Rs 200, 000 per minute. Second, that the current unbearable inflation is eroding people’s purchasing power by the day. Third, our GDP growth for the past many years had been dismal hovering around 2 percent. Fourth, our tax to GDP ratio of 8.6 % is lower than that of Afghanistan.
Fifth, there are fewer taxpayers in 180 million population of Pakistan than the number of taxpayers among 14.4 million population of Guatemala. Sixth, our debt servicing is equal to 120 percent of the total federal government revenue. Seventh, our expenditure on education has been floating between 1.5 and 2%.
Our governance practices like rule of law don’t make us any proud. According to Transparency international our corruption rating according to 2011 Corruption Perception Index stands at 134 out of 182 countries. Our national leadership doesn’t inspire any confidence either. Considering the above facts, yes, the pessimists have a strong case in predicting a “gloom and doom” picture.
What about the optimists? Do they have equally sound and solid arguments to counteract what the pessimists say? The optimists would say that we had had our bad luck in the forms of major earthquakes and floods. No one could anticipate these. Further, surely our state had been enfeebled due to the unforgivable follies of our rulers. But can this situation be turned around and would we continue to muddle through like in the past.
The question now is whether we can rebuild and put Pakistan together in some new order. But this will only be possible if we can turn our challenges into opportunities. And, to turn our challenges into opportunities a reference is made to the work of Jim O’ Neill, the Chief Economist at Goldman Sachs.
Mr O’ Neill had become famous for coining the term ‘BRIC’. In coining the term, he predicted the rapid growth of Brazil, Russia, China and India. He constructed, what he called, a Growth Environment Score (GES) to make his projections about the BRIC countries. The GES consisted of a few macroeconomic indicators and some microeconomic variables. These included the followings:
1. Macroeconomic Indicators: Inflation, Public Deficit, Investment spending, External Debt and the degree of Openness.
2. The Microeconomic Variables : Use of Cell Phones, Use of Computers, Use of Internet, Education, Demographics/ Life Expectancy, Rules of Law, Corruption, and Government stability.
Using his GES, O’Neill is now making some new projections based on his empirical evidence. And, he has presented his new projections in the form of a classification of what he had labeled as N-11 counties. Happily, Pakistan is included in this N-11 category. What sort of silver lining is Mr. O’Neill seeing on the horizon as regards Pakistan’s future?
Even though on a scale of 1 to 10 Pakistan’s current GES is rather low (about 4 +), it has the potential for faster growth if it were to exploit some of his potential. What are current those strengths? Let’s look at these.
The optimists suggest that Pakistan of today has four key strengths: Geography, Geology, Demography and Democracy even though ‘luli langri’. This means that our democracy has not yet fully developed and that it is passing through an embryonic phase. Doubtless, that our country is strategically positioned and we can leverage this advantage in any negotiations with foreign powers. Also, our country is a mineral treasure of sorts and we need to exploit this treasure to protect our economic interest with a view to substantially reduce our dependence on the debt which has increased astronomically.
Our current demographics indicate that almost 2/3rd of our population is below the age of 30 years. This is a potential reservoir of human energy and equipping our people with the right quality technical and vocational education we can significantly enhance our per capita productivity. This will provide a strong boost to not only our GDP growth but, in all likelihood, it will help reduce our alarming unemployment rate.
To rebuild peoples’ Pakistan, it will be pertinent to focus on a few most pressing challenges. These will include: fighting inflation on a war footing, making government operations less costlier and more efficient, reducing our reliance on debt whether internal or external, fighting corruption, making the working of government more open, improving rule of law by respecting the decisions of the superior judiciary, and most of all rebuilding the edifice of our educational system at all levels.
Can we adopt such an agenda? I think we can and so do the optimists. While our state may be weaker, we have a very resilient and vibrant society. To exploit our vibrant society, however, it all depends on our governance system and quality of leadership. It is rather sad but the fact remains that our present leadership had failed to create an environment in which both institutions and individuals can reach their maximum potential.
Our leaders need to have a sense of urgency about the current situation. What they need to do is to have a focused national agenda to work relentlessly on fewer fronts with a view to improve the daily existence of the common man. In the meantime, those of us who believe that Pakistan can be turned around need to rekindle the hope amongst people. The hope that may defeat the fear, fear of poverty, extremism and that Pakistan can be rebuilt given its present strength and the society.
The writer is a visiting professor at LUMS
A very apt article. Very different from the other articles on Pakistan's situation which are all about gloom and doom. This gives us Hope
I feel another callenge is that the authorities have evidently failed to provide a viable substitute of economic, educational and social opportunities to those who choose the path of radicalism.
The madrassa system churns out venom and hatred, which is not monitored and the extremists are freely raising another generation like them or even worse. Religious fanatics aim to destroy Pakistan’s secular, liberal, progressive, and democratic forces. And "great" news : they are on the loose! Despite the fact that the extremists are a minority, they’re boisterously vocal, well armed, and well funded.
This article was very to the point and really put things in perspective!
Very informative article but it had been more comprehensive if we had included the factor of public political awarness and rule of true representative who say no to conventional politics of “thana culture”.
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