Pakistan — Is it really as bad as they say?

The country needs leaders that can deliver

A lack of gas, oil, petrol, infrastructure, government writ, responsibility, cleanliness, healthcare – ad infinitum: the list, as they say, is endless. But when we look outside, to our foreign neighbours in the South East, East, and even to the West – one is prompted to ask, conversely, whether Pakistan is really as bad as the global and, at times, local media outlets portray it to be.

Poverty, unethical and immoral practices…

Pakistanis, most times, can be heard lambasting the unethical and immoral way in which things take place in Pakistan – corruption, white collar crime, bribery, are themes that are continuously and contentiously debated in men’s hair salons, parks, drawing rooms and terraces across the land; where ever there’s a gathering of friends, random folks or relatives, there’s almost certainly going to be some sort of critical analysis of how bad things are in the city, town or village, laced delicately with some allusion to politics and, subsequently, geopolitics.

But, much of the time, such discussion and debate tend to completely ignore the fact that Pakistan does not have a sole stake in the problems of the world. Let’s look at our closest neighbours: Russia, India, even China. Like Pakistan these countries are agrarian societies and have developed citified infrastructures that accommodate their citizens in a variety of ways. Yet these countries are also plagued with problems that go, historically, hand in hand with their prosperity. Poverty in India and China is unprecedented.

India, a country with a population of almost a billion people contains the most poverty stricken people in the world; China comes next; then Nigeria, Indonesia, and then Pakistan. We, in Pakistan, share the world’s problems – we by no means have sole ownership of the world’s problems. Both India and China are our regional economic superpowers; China, by 2018, will be the world’s foremost military and economic superpower, forecasted to take over the US and Europe in terms of global strategic interests; but still, paradoxically, unable to solve the riddle of its poverty and the problems that come with it.

Now let’s move to Japan, to a place called Fukushima. Fukushima houses a nuclear power plant which, famously, began leaking radioactive materials on March 12, 2011, due to an earthquake which affected the plant resulting in the meltdown of three of the plant’s six nuclear reactors. Even today the region’s environment is so severely and adversely devastated by that meltdown that the locality is uninhabitable.

However, in a desperate effort to make it habitable, and to attempt a speedier cleanup operation, commissioned contractor companies are attempting to seduce Japan’s poor and destitute to move to the region in order to employ them in work as cleaners who will attempt to purify the water and clean up the environment. No matter how many labourers such companies manage to employ, the cleanup at Fukushima will still take decades.

Though we may lead ourselves to believe that our problems are so very unique and culturally specific in their essence, this doesn’t necessarily have to be the case: consider, once again, the likes of India – our neighbor and fellow nuclear power – which has a very dynamic economy which has, at its core, an amalgam of cultural identities: caste systems, religio-political systems, and belief systems. Somehow the foregoing aspects meld to form a synergy that introduces a dynamism on the back of which the Indian economy is flourishing: we can do the same.

Just to provide some historical backing to my foregoing statement it was Genghis Khan who introduced us to the concept of a true multicultural society when the Mongol Hordes were accumulating territory at the speed of light back in the 12^th-13^th Centuries. What did good ol’ Genghis do, exactly? Every territory the Mongols captured would inevitably be inhabited by a multitude of races, clans, and, most crucially, artisans, intellectuals, spiritualists, and the like: in effect, individuals and groups of people who would hail from contrasting backgrounds and life experiences but whom were asked – perhaps not politely – to work together in order to create, develop, and innovate: we cannot deny the fact that it was Genghis Khan who heralded the coming of the modern age.

Another case in point is the honorable George Washington – in his time a colonel, general, and America’s first president. When George Washington was asked by the Continental Congress to preside over a ragtag army of troops in the French and Indian War, he had under his command some of the most uncouth, illiterate, undisciplined, immoral, and unclean individuals in the history of the world. However, he somehow managed to get them to follow a work ethic that only he believed in and understood, thereby protecting American lands from French and Indian encroachments. More significantly, it was General George Washington’s diverse Continental Army that repulsed and, ultimately, expelled the British colonialists of King George III from the American continent – which, at the time, was a miracle in itself, considering his army consisted of migrant Germans, Poles, Englishmen, Scots, Italians, and Irishmen, hailing from a diversity of socio-economic and religious backgrounds.

What he did and how he did it is more a measure of his inherent nature, his character, his ambition, and his desire to see America merged – as a continent – rather than for it to exist as an abstract and disconnected entity – and he achieved this: because he believed he could, utilising what little resources he had at his disposal.

Now what might you think Genghis and George had in common – and what, might you be asking, am I trying to do using such historical precedents to make a point? Please, patience, my point is en route. It was their ability to amalgamate a vast array of tribes, skillsets, and associations and, ultimately, to synergise an ever conflicting range of contrasts in order to create – in the 13^th and 17^th Centuries, respectively – empires. They brought people together, and, what’s even more ingenious, they got those ever divergent personalities to bond, progress, and to build, essentially converging and making history, as an unintended byproduct.

Leadership – or the lack of it…

Which brings us, directly, to another issue: leadership: or, more precisely, effective leadership. Whether it’s politics, industry, corporate, or any other kind of business – if it’s in Pakistan, there’s a leadership crisis, or crises if we would escalate and diversify the levels of severity. This, I would hasten to add, is a genuine and distinctly localised problem – or so it may seem. Asad Umar is the kind of local phenomenon that brings pride to local corporate leaders but, unfortunately, he’s a phenomenon, and, by the nature of a phenomenon, they tend to come and go, and not stay. The point I’m trying to make is that we need more corporate leaders like him, but how does one go about developing that kind of leadership caliber – while honing existing leadership potential –in contemporary Pakistan?

So, cometh the moment, cometh the man: or training provider to be just a little more specific and, more importantly, politically correct, or tactful (in business-speak). InteliPak Institute of Learning & Development is bringing the kind of executive leadership programmes to Pakistan that it has been missing for a very, very long time. Not only are our programmes unique, but they are also certificated by England’s elite institutions. InteliPak is the brainchild of Hamid Shahid Khan and Mavra Rafi who are the kind of patriots that genuinely would like to see their fellowmen, and of course women, flourishing. Which is why we have managed to acquire collaborative partnerships with elite British institutions that will be bringing their unique training courses to Pakistan, for executive leaders, from early 2016, for the very first time. We will be bringing to Pakistan the world’s leading experts in strategy, leadership, and management, with the sole intention of cultivating tomorrow’s Pakistani industry leaders today.

So let’s ask ourselves: are we the sole inheritors of the world’s poverty, problems, and malaise? Does the rest of the world not experience unethical practices, immorality and ill fortune? Is it really as bad in Pakistan as the world’s – and, at times, our very own – media makes out? And are our leadership crises as irredeemable as we had initially thought? I’m not so sure, and I believe you might side with me in recognising the diversity of similarities we have to some of the most leading economies in the world.

The writer is Managing Director, InteliPak Institute of Learning and Development.