Creativity required in economics

Why should Pakistan take dictation from the WB and the IMF? The answer is simple and it relates to having a policy initiative that is meaningless. The WB and the IMF are not related to Pakistan, but are touts of elsewhere's. The more I have taken up the IMF and the WB, or for that matter the Consultative Group of International Agricultural Research [CGIAR] or even the FAO, the agriculture arm of the UN, I have always come up short.
There has to be a connectedness for anything to transpire positively in the system. I was also considering why we have such a sordid response to change and the vindictiveness that subverts what has been done before. Are we that prejudiced that we are unable to work and give credit to any one that has gone before? The time wastage in removing everything and rebuilding it again in a form that is totally self-serving does not help any one's cause, least those that come as successors.
Organisational behaviour here is not studied or practiced as a system's orientation. If anything has to be carried on from the past, then plagiarism sets in. The credit that has to go to the past is seldom given there. It has happened in the political leaders cases as well. Everything of the previous one was junk and a new coterie of self-seekers sets in. The Socrates and Descartes in Pakistan are plagiarists and they will do anything that sets them in a place all of their own in terms of slave behaviour.
What constitutes this economic creativity or for that matter let us try and conceptualise in the case of Pakistan. Who sits at the desk and works out the sums of the country? Ideally, it should be the President and the PM and their coterie of cabinet ministers. I do not see the ministers in office and I do not see them working on their table and in fact, I would be surprised if any of them have conceptualised any papers. There are people who ask others to write and then take the credit for it. The last President/PM I saw do any work of a conceptualising nature was ZAB.
Governor Kalabagh not only worked on his desk but was also to be seen at the prompt time of 8 am at the West Pakistan Secretariat. He was a stickler for time. So what triggers off new ideas and actions? Well, for one it comes not at the desk but at some odd place when the unconscious forces force some aspect of the conscious to be made redundant. The examples one has, are many but the one that broke away from centuries of tradition was to do away with standing water in a rice crop and that saved as much as 40% of the water. No one would believe it. Had I gone into drip irrigation for rice there would have been further bedlam. The second most glaring example was of the high density mango planting in which as many as 570 to 600 plants per acre could be sown as against 30 per acre.
The fruiting would start in two years and imagine the impact on supply side and the income benefits to the small farmers. The small farmers would be in high-value crops, something that was the desire of all the policymakers since the 1980s. There were other high density options that were taken for other high value crops. In presentations to the highest in office I had asserted that the rain pattern had changed and as a result, cotton had to be sown in Islamabad, Mardan, Peshawar, Malakand and DI Khan. The purpose was to change the cropping pattern.
The next step was to grow cotton from Nowshera to Jhelum in the dry, arid belt. This would have been a huge success but as soon as there was a change in leadership the entire edifice was destroyed. The Nowshera-Jhelum cotton intervention is stated on proper reasoning, for exceptional cotton has been experimented in Balkesar by one private seed company 4-brothers. But all these actions and others that were innovative aspects of the tenure were dismantled by the remnants that remained behind. All of the interventions that were alternative and innovative have been wasted and/or discontinued. The growth would have been phenomenal but the real interest and passion one had was for the system to make differences for the farmers whoever and wherever they may be. There is a conflict in such actions for the status quo (queers) who will not want their conveniences to fail. This insight destroys something that the status quo cherishes as a matter of ego enhancement, designations rather than work effort. Rather taking on cosmetic efforts for real ones.
Surely there must be other aspects as well. When this breakthrough comes on, there is complete vividness. The world takes on an intensity inwardly as well as outwardly and the persuasive powers increase. It is almost as if there is a case of heightened consciousness. If one considers Carl Jung was of the view that unconsciousness is the depth dimension of consciousness. This is not a hit or miss situation, but something that comes as a result of a pattern in accordance with one's own commitment. When does this insight come? Well, no one can tell you when it arrives, but for most people it comes in a non-structured way. It is as if the guards are off? Rigid aspects are contrary to this new element.
It is as if the inner controls were caught off guard that may be a new requirement. If one is bound to previous conclusions, then there is no chance for the system to change. The agronomic practices that have never changed will never allow productivity or new aspects to be played into this productivity. So if the population increases and productivity is missing one might as well keep on accepting food inflation.
That is the issue that would make the difference to Pakistan's economy. No innovation, no creativity, no chance of social issues being covered. So the innovators own commitment comes into play. An entirely new whole (Germans call it Gestalt) has to be recreated so that the new picture is clear. The institutional arrangements have to change with this kind of requirements for the old hands are lame horses unable to run with the system. It is for that reason alone that two new policy issues were brought in first that there is no banjar qadeem and secondly there is no bad water. The marginal areas and the excluded areas were to be brought into the economic equation and based on novel ideas. Those that were lame ducks then start to show the holes in their socks but that is not all, a new kind of intrigue and bad mouthing starts.
So where does Pakistan stand with regard to its innovative designs and techniques, so as to cater for the two aspects of life first the poor small farmer and secondly, the economic benefits that accrue to the national economy. Growth is not a number-crunching exercise and the ability to fudge figures, rather than tell the simple truths have been missing in our economic masters. There is no chance of improving if the lies are perpetuated on the hapless many. They have no way to go but to accept what is stated to them. That is what we are up against in the economic equity systems. Much more has to be done for the poor and much less for the rich. The social equation is a lot distorted at the moment.
The positive tension is a requirement of the times. This tension is not health destruction-related but one that enables one to work better. Mechanical alternation would not help but somehow the conscious continuous work that will enable criticality to be developed that would hopefully take this country forward. That is the connection between conscious and unconscious work. Yet in our culture, the ability to ward off temptation to do nothing is gaining ground and because of the modern technology that is permeating in our society. Modern gadgetry is in conflict with the unconscious and does not allow the breakthrough required for mental faculties so that creativity can come forth. It is literally that or nothing. Pakistan has to put its act together.