- Some factors
This, the second part will end with an approach used successfully both in the private and public sectors by the author in the course of his career. How are we to proceed, if we wish to move in the direction of our visionary Allama Iqbal? The first is to distinguish between a scientist and technologist, what the functions of each are. Also to distinguish between hard and soft disciplines. The difficulty that arises with macro- economics is that it has had political intrusion to include a non-Nobel, Nobel prize. The forces behind. This suits the lending agencies way of working on a Keynes or non- Keynes way. We need to work out why Arberry looks at the strength of the West arising out of science and technology; whereas Mahmud Ahmed and rendition of Alauddin Khalji’s approach is “art and technology”. Also do not forget the financial disaster of about a decade ago has led to the same category causing the disaster from the way the strictly capitalist world corrected it. We need to work out whether we should continue with our “naib qasid” type of accountability or do something else. Maybe, because of our complex in serving, white skin makes us feel inferior.
Why Napoleon did have over 150 self-paying Frenchmen scholars when he got incarcerated in Egypt? On being smuggled out of Egypt about a year later, he made sure administrative accountability was separated from the legal. Is it not the legalists who are wholly responsible for drafting our laws in a foreign language? In a discussion with Aurangzeb Khan of Swat a lot of the rigmarole arose out of the imposition of a legal system that ignored time. How do you act quickly in law? If futurity is defined by “bail before arrest”. If Churchill said in the Second World War all was well if the Courts were functioning. They did not realise that he meant that with the various other
aspects of the system were moving well. Then so did the courts! Again during the days of James I of England when Sir Edward Coke was Chief Justice many asses involving disputes on account of export of blackfaced sheeps’ wool to Holland to convert into cloth (UK did not have the technology) led to common law courts’ awry judgements as there were no precedent. When in Devon I visited the library in Topsham on the river Ex and indeed it did form part of the export route. The CEO of England had an honest Lord Chancellor– Thomas Egerton, Lord Ellesmere, and decided such cases could be taken away by the Chancellor’s Court from the common law courts. These courts ultimately formed part of the Chancery Division looking after equity i.e. Ehtihsan. In other words the Chancery was supervisor to the Common Law. The Chancellor did away with time consuming red tape, used his common sense and gave equitable decisions. This was the equivalent of the Nazar fi’l Muzalim (complaint) courts alluded to by Hazrat Ali (R.A.) and formalised by the fifth Omayyad Caliph Abdul Malik bin Marwan. This approach in England continued till 1874 when the judicial system of UK was modified and now has four divisions: Common Law; Admiralty, Probate and Divorce, and the Chancery Division. The last is concerned with equity and morality (more important, their man-defined law) and to accept compelling circumstantial evidence with organisation like PIA and PSM going up in smoke, it doesn’t take a manager with less than the average intelligence to know what is wrong. Suo motus help but it is no use swimming the English Channel and you drown 100 yards from the white cliffs of Dover. Incidentally the Complaint courts in Islam were functional during the Mughal rule. Who does not know the old lady’s complaint to Emperor Jahangir (who was ill) and the punishment meted out to the high noble! This means administrative accountability must remain within the executive domain otherwise it takes those accountable off the hook. Look at us after 70 years! Of course there are many other factors which form the picture including, but not limited, to merit, attention to the minutest detail, incremental progress, positive cash flows.
The most cost effective method for any type of government, because all work through a bureaucracy, is to have each and every government unit define its Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) which would hardly take up one per cent of its budget. Of course there is a methodology to doing this properly. All empires have collapsed because of untruths. Those empires have flourished longest that have been transparent and consistent in action.
Confirmation can be got from Disrupted Unity (Tamim Ansari), Lost History (Morgan), The Silk Roads (Peter Frankopan), The Ottoman Empire (Kinross), The Pathfinders (Dr Jim Al- Khalilee), writings and books by operations research by Stafford Beer, modified to suit our era of IT as it affects entry, post-experience training and development (change) which I define as increasing productivity within existing budgets and the only originality I lay claim to, that is, technology is the knowhow to solve problems all sorts in manmade systems. As SOPs are developed; the stakeholders’ involvement helps to tighten up administrative looseness and the missing connections between the intellectual. Vision, Mission, Goals and Strategies are to be firmly linked to the operating systems and procedures and there is a consistency in movement of work flow, which are predictable road maps. In short, the results at the bottom are what those at the top are left looking for in our manmade systems today.
In closing, I may mention that the meaning used of various English words need to be carefully expressed. For example, religion and secularity mean different things to different people. Consider “Honesty is the Best Policy”, honesty in Islam is not a policy but is the correct language. However, some has to be tactful.
Consider the other English expression “Cleanliness is next to Godliness.” To our way of thinking it is Godliness itself. Remember morality always, without exception, has the last laugh. Look at how empires have perished through deception.