The quick fix

The people of Pakistan are beaten by frightening inflation and rising prices, and now the terror attacks on the mosques and Milad processions. Obviously, there is sadness and discomfort in the air. The poor are trying to cling on to any last piece of hope and for that they are desperately trying to find any reason and light whatsoever they can find.

Cost of living crisis has hit every household, and we need to fix things. The problem with fixing things is that when it comes to national issues there aren’t any quick fixes. As John F Kennedy said, “All this will not be finished in the first one hundred days.

Nor will it be finished in the first one thousand days, not in the life of this Administration, nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet. But let us begin.” So, the point is to stop peddling any quick fixes rather look at the long term and chart a plan and stick to it.

In this piece there will not be any quick fixes for the power sector or the economy as the readers would have had their fill from increasing the cheaper fuel mix to nationalisation of IPPs (Independent Power Producers). Some easier said than done and others outright absurd and fictitious.

The hard work must start from retrospection as to what went wrong in every sector and how that can be fixed. Here the fixation is not on something quick rather something that is meaningful, and the good impact would last at least a few generations.

We often speak about South Korea that made use of our five-year development plan and rose to heights of economic success, I am not sure whether that is true or not, but I surely know that we have had world class economists like Dr Mehboob ul Haq working for us and writing plans for our economy. Then why we are where we are? Is it lack of plans or lack of implementation? I think it is lack of sincere implementation that is at the heart of our malaise, to put it mildly by borrowing JFK’s words, “This country cannot afford to be materially rich and spiritually poor.”

Unfortunately, we have become spiritually poor, where corruption and insincerity are rewarded, and good work goes unnoticed. Is the corrupt at fault alone or something else has broken the system? Let’s make a quick check, what do we value most in our society, knowledge, community service and honesty or money, material wealth, big houses and large vehicles.

If the answer is that we see common men respecting wealth and material belongings as opposed to knowledge and good work then the whole society is to blame, because as it is said that “A nation reveals itself not only by the men it produces but also by the men it honors, the men it remembers.”

Let’s go back to history to see when nations faced dilemmas like us either in the shape of economic hardship or war how they got themselves out of that quagmire.

The strategy appears to have a few pillars:

First and foremost is the attitude towards the challenge as attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference. We must change the national attitude towards these problems by helping the people realise that the only way out of this mess is to fight and never give up.

It will be a long walk to success but surely it is worth it. China rallied under Chairman Mao and the famous Great March started the revolution, we must remember that it was a long way to success and full of sacrifices.

The second important pillar is complete transparency, the government and the leaders must be absolutely honest in defining the problems and outlining the answers to those. We need leaders that are blunt when it comes to telling the truth. This also means embracing the solutions that are difficult but necessary.

This has worked for nations and companies alike, General Motors, one of the icons of the automobile industry declared bankruptcy and reorganized itself and it worked for it. (PIA, other SOEs, Discos, anybody listening?)

Third pillar is to Innovate, we must reinvent our industry and exports in the light of new technology and requirement of new services that have been made possible due to information technology.

Government must support innovation through policy frameworks and enabling environment. We must unleash the creative potential of the common person. That would not need billions of dollars of incentives and bailout packages that our traditional businesses have been accustomed to rather it might need minor tweaks in the environment, making it easy for a young person or their groups to get together and provide services globally. In the form of technology hubs, better training, soft loans and these would be small loans, tax incentives, etc.

Churchill said, “All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope.”

Same is the case for us, we need simple things, but these are values to be upheld, that include Justice, Honour, Transparency, Equity and respect for common man.

Imam Ghazali wrote many books and one of them is “Counsel for Kings”; its translation is published by Durham University of United Kingdom, (original name is Nasihat ul Muluk). He noted a quotation of Hazrat Ali “al-mulk yabqa ma’al-kufr wala yabqu ma’a zulm” “Nations do not collapse because of kufr, they collapse because of injustice.”

So, while we see our country sleepwalking into a social and economic abyss, it is high time that we remind ourselves and our leaders to do justice in all walks of life, before it becomes too late for any salvation.

This would include reducing the wasteful expenditure on protocols and uncontrolled spending on the Superior Servants of the bureaucracy of all shades. This would also mean to look at indirect taxes from the point of view of an ordinary man who must pay sales tax on most of the items of his grocery that would consume all his income whereas the rich pay the same on a miniscule percentage of their total wealth. Further the total taxation for the rich is lower than the comparable burden on the poor, this is injustice.

Billions are owed by the government departments to the Discos and this consumption is further increased by the well healed technos who have made a mess of the energy sector, yet they get free electricity and gas, whereas the burden is shared by the poor, this is injustice.

Thieves get free electricity and one-third of the cost that an ordinary person pays towards his bills comprises of the cost of this theft and inefficiency, this is injustice.

The rich make use of many facilities including the well-paved roads and underpasses and overheads, well suited for their SUVs and cars but they pay too little to use these facilities thus burdening the already dying poor, this is injustice.

The list could go on and would fill quite many pages, but it is not required that someone list all these injustices for them to be corrected. For any correction only adherence to the basic values is sufficient.

We don’t need simplistic answers for complex economic problems, these would be at least as complex and technical in detail as the problems are, but we need simple values to guide the complex processes that need to be undertaken.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2023