What is to be done?

 

Comprehension:

Pakistan as a state is a perfect example of the contradiction between theory and practice, between appearance and reality. On top of that, the failing attempts to conceal these fault lines are backfiring big time.

Take democracy as an example. In reality, democracy is the ceding of power to representatives by citizens to provide them with the basic amenities of life, but it is the opposite here. The representatives who are given powers by the citizens, dominate the very citizens. They are kept in dark when international deals are made and ultimately threatened for their life if the citizens ask about transparency and accountability. An example is Musharraf, who dived into the Afghan War on Terror without even consulting the parliament and people. The country suffers the consequences even today.

On the economic front, creditors are invited to come and dictate to us their terms and conditions of what they want from us. There isn’t anything wrong with taking debt if it is transparently used in productive chores. The nation is told to bear the difficult decisions and convinced to improve the export capacity of the country at the cost of cutting the development budget and implementing extra taxes for the last 75 years. Yet there is no clean water, no safe sanitation, no decent education, and no effective healthcare system. The eagerness to prioritization of exports causes devaluation of the currency which ultimately puts more burden on the lower-middle class when they have to purchase imported commodities for their basic needs.

Escaping these feeble conditions, Pakistanis living abroad contribute the greatest amount to our foreign exchange reserves in the shape of remittances. This brain drain of talented young men is lauded as an achievement. Furthermore, those who cannot escape the sufferings at home are prevented from seeing the reality lest they ask questions. The tool employed for this brainwashing is the school curriculum which is designed to disable critical thinking and is surfeit (full off) with moral teachings and patriotism to extol (glorify) obedience to the state and authority.

This impractical education model keeps the productivity of the nation so low that even with currency depreciation we are unable to boost our exports. There is no example of any developing country that has progressed with an education model such as ours.

To engrave patriotism, low-level tense relations with neighboring countries are always welcomed. Yet again there is no example of any developing or developed country which prefers turbulent relations with its neighboring nations. It never helps in increasing Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) and the tourism industry. People, despite VIP security protocol, are reluctant to visit or invest in Pakistan. As a matter of fact, 15.5 million international tourists visited Vietnam in 2018, compared to 17,800 tourists who visited Pakistan. It alone is enough to show the dire socio-political and socio-economic conditions that we are in as a nation and state. On top of that, the many hybrid experiments have thrown us into an abysmal crisis.

Original Article: (By Anjum Altaf Published in Dawn, February 3rd, 2023)

THERE have always been gaps in Pakistan between appearance and reality, between theory and practice. They have widened now to the point that the structure is wobbling. Attempts to paper them over have set off vicious feedback effects narrowing the pathways to recovery. The land, being inanimate, will survive; the present order is endangered.

Take democracy. Everyone is aware that the facade has masked authoritarian rule. Leave that aside and consider what classical liberal democracy implies in theory: Sovereignty resting with citizens who authorize representatives to act in accordance with their wishes and be answerable to them. But look at the practice. The Pakistani state is more answerable to external patrons and creditors, implementing their demands quite contrary to the wishes of citizens to whom it owes its authorization.

This inversion of accountability, upending the traditional social contract of reciprocity between nation and state, has split the nation-state. The monopoly on violence, that citizens ceded to the state in return for the guarantee of liberties and fulfilment of needs, is being used instead to dominate citizens. In dealing with external agents, however, the state commits the entire nation to deals and arrangements without transparency. In effect, the state is existing to oppress citizens while the nation exists to be pawned to creditors.

The replacement of the social contract between citizens and state with a politico-economic contract between the state and outsiders has significant consequences. Consider first the political aspect and recall the single phone call to Musharraf who stood the country’s Afghanistan policy on its head without consulting either parliament or the people. In response to citizen demands, however, he threatened they would not know what hit them or from where. The different responses illustrate well the real locus of power.

Turn to the economic aspect and consider the invitation to creditors to come and tell us what they want. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with debt as long as it is used productively but without accountability to citizens there is no mechanism to ensure that. As a result, the profligate state is reduced to borrowing from one to pay the other to the point that there are no more takers. Not surprisingly, the major concern of creditors is to ensure repayment of their loans.

Inevitably, this calls for prioritization of exports to generate the foreign exchange for repayment which implies reallocating money from social expenditures to boosting exports, ie, austerity for the people and concessions for exporters. The squeeze on social services means, 75 years on, no clean water, no safe sanitation, no decent education, no effective health access, no flood- or quake-proof housing.

Prioritization of exports also means devaluing the currency even though that raises the prices of the most basic items of daily use that are now imported. Raising competitiveness of exports that rely on cost not productivity also means suppression of wages and benefits of the very people making the goods to be exported. That is ensured by crushing unions and closing eyes to the depredations of contract labour. Consider, for example, that workers stitching soccer balls for export earn less than Rs10,000 per month for full-time work. In every possible way, money is transferred from workers who would spend it mostly on locally made goods and services to exporters who, given the insecurity in the country, are more than likely to park it in some safe haven.

The impoverishment of citizens has cascading downstream effects that buy short-term relief while incubating long-term damage. Whoever can find a way to escape the country wants to leave often risking their lives. Desperate human beings have become the country’s biggest export and major contributors to foreign exchange earnings. This is lauded as an achievement to be augmented.

Those unable to leave need to be prevented from seeing through the causes of their sufferings lest they ask questions. Hence the peculiar nature of the school curriculum designed to disable critical thinking, the surfeit of moral teachings extolling obedience to authority, and the propagation of narratives that project enemies in every corner.

The loss of skills and miseducation keeps productivity so low that exports remain stagnant despite rock-bottom wages and huge currency depreciation. There is virtually no prospect of Pakistani exports graduating up the value-added chain. Those who claim otherwise have to point to one example of a country developing without providing a sound education to its children.

The fundamentalist ethos being propagated militates against the advancement of women and again there is no example of a country developing, or its fertility rate declining, without integrating women in the labour force.

The national narrative, in order to be reinforced, requires continuous low-level turbulence which means tense relations with all neighboring countries. Once again, one would be hard-pressed to identify a country developing without leveraging its regional market. It is odd that there can be serious talk of increasing exports while remaining completely silent about the extreme insecurity that is pushing even local industrialists to relocate investments to more stable locales or shift from manufacturing to trade.

More importantly, insecurity blocks foreign direct investment as an alternative to debt-driven development. The few foreign workers in the country need to be protected by army battalions while foreign managers run the risk of being lynched.

One comparison should suffice to illustrate the costs of insecurity and confirm the reality of how scared people are to enter Pakistan even when offered VIP-level security. In 2018, Vietnam, with less than half Pakistan’s population, repor­ted 15.5 million international tourists; Pakistan reported 17,800. This statistic encapsulates all the negative feedback effects that have converged to cripple Pakistan — fundamentalism, gender discrimination, the bleeding of skills, poorly educated workforce, rampant insecurity, the disregard for democracy, and debt peonage.

Escaping the impending crisis is a tall order but the many hybrid experiments have severely dented the capability to undo the damage. We are not even sure who should do what, in what order, and how. The light is blinking red.