The high voter turnout compared to previous elections is being attributed to a number of factors. These include an independent Election Commission (EC), procedural improvements, cleaning up of the electoral list, addition of youthful voters especially in urban areas, awareness campaigns and exhortations by political leaders at their public meetings. Common sense would suggest a higher turnout in urban constituencies and relatively better off districts. Poor in wealth, poor in turnout is a common adage in mature democracies. But the turnout on May 11, 2013 observed a distribution contrary to the expectations. Karachi, according to the Social Policy and Development Centre (SPDC), is the least poor district of Pakistan. Yet, the voter turnout was above the national average of 60 per cent in only three constituencies of the National Assembly. The highest was 65.54 per cent in NA-242. Some voters may have been kept away by the terrorist threat. Ranked after Karachi, however, even in Rawalpindi only NA-53 witnessed a voter turnout above the mean of 60 per cent, in spite of the far lower threat level. Lahore, a district with the third lowest poverty ratio, was no different: only NA-128 experienced a voter turnout of 64 per cent.

It was in the poorest districts that some of the highest turnouts were in evidence. Bahawalnagar, with a poverty rank of 37, saw all of its constituencies cross the 60 per cent mark. In fact, one constituency of the district, NA-191, was ahead of all constituencies of the country with a turnout of 84.8 per cent. Chitral, with a poverty rank of 61, had a voter turnout of 63.7 per cent. In rural Sindh, the highest turnout of 68.4 per cent was in NA-228 of Umerkot, followed by 67.5 per cent in NA-233 of Dadu. NA-267, Kachhi-Jhal Magsi, attracted 61.3 per cent of the registered voters. Both constituencies of Layyah, which are ranked 60 on the poverty scale, attracted turnouts of 67.6 and 68.1 per cent. All five constituencies of Muzzafargarh, ranked 90 at the bottom vis-a-vis poverty, showed a voter turnout of above 61 per cent.

The daily struggle for making ends meet occupies the poor the most. This is what economists call an opportunity or alternative cost for political participation. Their experiences inform economists about the hollowness of the political sloganeering to reduce poverty and unemployment. How is it that the highest turnouts have occurred in the poorest constituencies? Poverty is strongly correlated with the poor state of education and health. Many of these constituencies lie far away from the “media land.” Awareness, therefore, cannot explain much in this regard. Mobilisation by political parties through mass work can bring the poor out. Other than some big jalsas by major parties, political work at the grassroots level has become a thing of the past. There was no Bhutto-style wave anyway, Imran Khan’s tsunami notwithstanding. Restrictions placed by the EC on serving food and transport should also have also reduced the turnout.

Many of these constituencies continue to suffer from the feudal stranglehold. In its worst form, the thana kachehry culture fertilises ghost turnouts. The EC has admitted that the turnout at some polling stations was more than 100 per cent. One will not be surprised if many such polling stations were located in the poverty-stricken, high-turnout constituencies. There is work cut out for the EC. After holding an election which, on the whole, was free of political and extra-political meddling, it has to find ways of delinking the electoral competition from the informal nexus between the political elite and the administration at the constituency level.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 17^th, 2013.

According to Gallup Pakistan, the economy, despite its all-pervasive effects, occupies the attention span of talk-show hosts only six per cent of the time. Regardless, the economy on the eve of elections is not in too bad a shape. Doomsday scenarios of caretakers rushing to the IMF in the face of depleting foreign exchange reserves and the dreaded one rupee one cent exchange rate have come to naught. It is time to get real. Even the ‘fiscal deficit is the mother of all evils’ clan is shifting gears. The economy’s growth remains at a fairly healthy level of 3.6 per cent. Higher than population growth, it implies a positive increase in income per capita. The two main drivers of real sector growth, major crops and large-scale manufacturing, have grown faster than the previous year — 3.2 per cent against 2.9 per cent and 2.8 against 1.2 per cent, respectively. The services sector, the driver of jobless growth during the Musharraf period, slowed down from 5.3 to 3.7 per cent.

Needless to say, the GDP growth has to be twice the rate achieved to make a difference to the unemployment rate, which, in the second quarter of the current year, has increased to 6.5 per cent from six per cent in the same quarter last year. It will be critical for the newly elected government to accelerate the rate of investment, which has declined in large-scale manufacturing by as much as 22.5 per cent in current market prices. Growth has mainly come from capacity utilisation. An indication of this is that while credit to the private sector has increased significantly, 86 per cent of it is for working capital. The change of the GDP base from 1999-2000 to 2005-06 reveals an anomalous shift in the structure of the economy. In the common development experience, structural change refers to an increasing share of manufacturing and declining share of agriculture. In our case, it is the reverse signaling deindustrialisation. Agriculture is the basis of our time-tested resilience. But the road to high growth and full employment can be taken neither through agriculture nor services. Manufacturing growth is the key.

As real growth maintained a semblance of respectability, especially in agriculture, inflation has also come down substantially. The consumer price index (CPI), the standard measure of inflation rate, stands at 7.8 per cent in the first 10 months of the current year, compared with 10.8 per cent in the corresponding period last year. In fact, the inflation rate of 5.8 per cent in the month of April is already approaching the lower range of the much sought after single-digit. While the Wholesale Price Index and the Sensitive Price Indicator (SPI) are also closely in line with the CPI, a rare happening, the SPI at 7.9 per cent is higher than last year’s tally of 6.7 per cent. In April, the SPI has begun to decline. The reason is that food inflation is coming down faster than the overall inflation. However, prices of wheat and wheat flour rose by more than 15 per cent. With wheat output short of the requirement by half a million tonnes, there may be further increases.

Core inflation has been above the headline inflation since the easing of the monetary policy. The holding action taken by the State Bank of Pakistan last April may have to be repeated to absorb the pressures arising from the excessive public as well as private spending during the elections campaign.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 10^th, 2013.

In the ongoing election campaign, misgovernance by the outgoing regimes at the federal and provincial levels has emerged as a major issue. In the manifestos and public pronouncements, however, there is little appreciation of the fact that weak governance is a reflection of the rapidly deteriorating quality of bureaucracy. The directions set out by the political leadership have to be implemented by the bureaucracy. Pakistan inherited a centralised system of bureaucracy from colonial rule. It acquitted itself well in dealing with the immediate problems arising from an ill-planned Partition, especially the massive influx of refugees. On the annual, it learned the art of wrenching power out of the hands of an inept political class and extracting rents out of the allocation of evacuee property and a plethora of economic controls. Two efforts to reform the system by Ayub Khan and Yahya Khan turned out to be witch-hunting exercises. The third one under Zulfikar Ali Bhutto aimed to bring back political control. It took away the constitutional security provided to civil servants and introduced the lateral entry system. While it opened the steel frame to fresh blood and experts in a predominantly generalist bureaucracy, it also marked the beginning of what, in popular reckoning, is political interference. Postings and transfers have become the main instruments of deploying political power. A rapid turnover of civil servants in key positions has become a bane of our politics. Before a secretary or the head of an organisation has had the time to settle down in his job and learn the tricks of the new trade, he is posted to another position or, worse, made an officer on special duty (OSD) — a glorified title for an officer made non-functional. In recent years, donors have jumped in with money and ideas on civil service reform. The money has been used up and added to the debt while the ideas have been declared unpractical.

Let us face it. The economic and social problems facing the country are too complex for a bureaucracy that has found it increasingly hard to carry out its original mandate — to preserve order and collect revenue. Without a well laid out plan for civil service reform, I have no doubt in my mind that the government installed after May 11 will quickly start hiding behind the familiar refrain that the bureaucracy is creating hurdles in its way. To give a fair chance to implement its manifesto, something like the American spoil system may be in order. A party winning the elections should be formally allowed to appoint people of its choice to top positions. Of course, the bunch leaves when the government falls or completes the tenure, rather than adding to the already bloated bureaucracy.

In this context, the profound implications of the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution have not been understood. With most subjects and the bulk of resources devolved to the provinces, the concept of centralised services has become meaningless. Indeed, judging by the manifestos, the local governments are likely to be revived. For effective delivery of services, each level of government should recruit its own bureaucracy according to its needs. It makes sense for the federal government to recruit officers for the foreign service, but recruitment for the police service and providing officers to the provinces require special pleading. Similarly, the provinces have no business recruiting and appointing teachers and doctors for the districts. Finally, at the concurrent level of governance, the Planning Commission needs to become the secretariat of the Council of Common Interest as well as the National Economic Council, with powers to recruit professional staff directly, but in proportion to provincial quotas.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 3^rd, 2013.

To woo the voters in the forthcoming elections, all parties seem to have spent a lot of time and money in the preparation of their manifestos. While this is a sign of political maturity, the thickness of these documents has not changed their well-known narratives. The speeches at public gatherings, the parties’ political telecasts and the advertisements in the print media leave no doubt about the reproduction of the stock-in-trade. Owing to the economic mess that we are in, the narratives do pay heed to it by offering quick timelines for solving problems that have been long in the making and might take even longer to resolve. Here go the narratives. No prizes for guessing which belongs where. Again, no caricaturing was intended. My apologies if there are any unintended consequences. The order of presentation is accidental, not a recommendation.

1) We are the party of economic revival. We have the experience to carry it out without a kashkol. We know motorways. We know mass transit. All big cities will have bus rapid transit systems. Bullet trains will be next. Load-shedding will end in two years. Roti will be sasti. Peeli taxis and green rickshaws will provide self-employment. Three million jobs will be created for others. Nobody will be denied kidney treatment. Danish schools will provide the disadvantaged an entry into the elite. The country will be among the top 10 developed countries. It will have the highest laptops per capita in the world.

2) We are the party of change. Change means zero tolerance for corruption. Only those unspoiled by the past can spearhead this change. The 16 million youth between the ages of 18 and 25 are the obvious change-makers. Besides controlling the party, they get one-fourth of the tickets. Their presence in parliament will ensure justice for all, education for all and health for all. Those not in parliament will get 10 million jobs. Load-shedding will end in two to three years, corruption in three months. Our trust is in Allah, not America. With governance in the hands of those fearing Allah, institutions will be reformed on an emergency basis.

3) We are a party of the shaheeds, who were martyred for trying to bring about a change. They introduced land reforms, which were stopped by the Shariat Court. They were working to secure roti, kapra aur makaan for the poor, but BB shaheed’s government was prematurely dismissed twice. In the past five years, the courts did not allow us to do much for the poor. We provided thousands of jobs in the public sector enterprises, but the process was often disrupted by vested interests. Load-shedding would have ended, but for the courts’ intervention in the rental power projects. Massive floods forced us to concentrate on relief and rehabilitation rather than development. Still, we managed to increase support prices for farmers. Despite the fiscal cliff, the Benazir Income Support Programme took good care of the poorest of the poor. We stand ready to sacrifice our lives for the sake of the poor in the coming five years.

Practitioners of development would immediately recognise that the first narrative is a set of visible projects. The second narrative raises all the slogans that international donors and the NGO community love. They point to a set of programmes waiting to be converted into feasible projects. The last narrative is a lament. Neither are there any projects, nor programmes. All three lack a plan. As usual, policy will be the job of the generalist bureaucrats, whose reform has brought the system to its wit’s end.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 26^th, 2013.

Imran Khan’s statement at the press conference last week to launch the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf’s (PTI) election manifesto was remarkable for what it left unsaid. He talked about reducing the number of federal ministries to 17, although that number also exceeds the ministerial job specifications post the Eighteenth Amendment. Reading out the salient topics, a now reconciled follower announced a lot of emergencies — education, health, energy, you name it. Institutions take decades to establish, but the PTI already has an emergency plan for institutional reform. Imran was flanked by General Ziaul Haq’s minister for youth affairs and a scion of landed aristocracy. No wonder, there was the trademark pampering of the youth. No wonder, also, that he kept mum on the land question. If one goes through the document circulated to the media, however, there is an eminently sensible agenda for land reforms. Not a word was said about this by anyone present. With the PPP having forgotten what its founding fathers stood for, and the PML-N’s marriage of convenience with feudal electables, the field is wide open to appeal to rural votes with a serious message on land reforms. Instead, Imran seems obsessed with busting the urban trust of the Sharif clan.

The PTI manifesto promises to strictly enforce the existing land reform laws. In effect, there are no such laws. They were declared un-Islamic by the Shariat Court. To demonstrate its seriousness, the PTI should have become a party to the pending appeal in the Supreme Court for a review of the earlier judgment. Has the commitment been made to placate the land reform enthusiasts in the party, hoping that the time to fulfil this commitment will never come? This is a game that the old guard of politicians usually plays. It is hard to believe that a person like Imran can make a commitment he does not intend to fulfil. The agenda, in his case, is unhidden. One likes to hope that the PTI would do what is necessary to resume the implementation of the land reform laws. In view of the developing techniques, there is a strong economic case for reducing the ceiling on ownership even further. For the present, however, the old laws are good enough for the increasing mass of the landless. Poor and dishonest implementation had made nonsense of their true intent. Effective execution, together with the PTI’s commitment to outlaw and uncover benami ownership, will ensure what it promises — the distribution of resumed land to the landless only. There is also an unambiguous declaration to eliminate the distinction between agricultural and non-agricultural incomes for tax purposes.

Small holdings for tillers are good for higher agricultural productivity, lower inequality and reduced rural poverty. However, satisfying the land hunger of peasants comes up against the greed of mafias, land grabbers and speculators. Land is a gift of nature and requires that it is handled with care. Corporate corrupters cannot augment its supply. The manifesto proposes appropriate legislation to stop tenant eviction and break the stranglehold of the patwari and “revenuecracy”, so that land records are maintained transparently and accessed easily. It is hoped the proposed legal reform will also relate to the issues of fragmentation resulting from inheritance laws, eminent domain and land acquisition. Good governance of land is as important as equitable land distribution. The focus of the manifesto on strengthening local governance is extremely relevant here. This is borne out by the experience of Botswana.

The PTI needs to not fight shy of telling the tiller what it promises. There are votes to be won here. Besides, the youth bulge is larger in rural areas.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 19^th, 2013.

When in power, politicians keep grumbling that foreign affairs and national security for them are no-go areas of policy. Economy is, however, largely their domain. Out of power, they wish for caretakers to clean it up and take all the hard decisions. This undying timidity has been the main source of the structural deformities characterising our economy. By not choosing an economist as caretaker prime minister, the Election Commission of Pakistan spoiled the game. And by preventing an economist from becoming caretaker finance minister, the non-economist governor of the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) ensured, unwittingly, that the caretakers would focus on elections rather than attempt an economic miracle in 60 days. To be sustained over a long period, economic reform must be thought up, legislated and implemented by elected representatives themselves. Were it a matter of technocratic efficiency, the work done by the caretaker regime of Moin Qureshi would not have been rolled back by successive regimes.

The issue at hand is not so much a home-grown package of reform, but when the deteriorating state of the economy will force recourse to the international lender of the last resort, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which, in return, will demand a whole set of prior actions that the politicians failed to take. The script is a rehash of previous transitions: high external debt, rising debt servicing, depleting foreign exchange reserves and the spectre of a run on the rupee. Traditionally, the local lender of the last resort, the SBP, is the keenest member of the economic team for an IMF deal. It seems the present governor is departing from the script. With reserves of $7.1 billion at the SBP and another five billion dollars with commercial banks, he feels he can pull through. The amount covers two months’ imports and is enough to pay the IMF and other dues by the end of June. Imports are contracting as a result of low growth. Remittances keep on springing a surprise and the dip since December is to be overcome by a new initiative exempting transfer charges. The current account deficit between July 2012 and February 2013 was a manageable $700 million. Inflation was down to eight per cent during July 2012 and March 2013 and the dollar at Rs98.43 is still away from the dreaded parity of Rs100 for a dollar. In the second quarter of the current year, external debt and liabilities were 27.9 per cent of the gross domestic product (GDP), lower than 29 per cent of the GDP in the comparable quarter last year. Total public debt at 61.2 per cent of the GDP breached the legal limit of 60 per cent, but is far lower than the public debts of Greece, Italy, Spain and Cyprus. Pakistan is meeting her official obligations, though some sovereign guarantees have been invoked. The stock exchange and the currency market are not sending any warning signals. Credit to the private sector, especially fixed investment, is up.

The problem is on the side of revenue and expenditure, with a likely fiscal deficit of eight to nine per cent. A caretaker government can tighten expenditure, but the Finance Division is shifting the blame to the Federal Board of Revenue, where confusion is the order of the day. In any case, tax reform is better left to elected representatives. As for the IMF, it is unlikely to risk entering into an arrangement that the next government may not buy. Its next mission is mainly expected to discuss the results of its latest study on energy subsidies. By releasing Rs20 billion to subsidise the power sector this week, the caretaker prime minister has said thanks, but no thanks.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 12^th, 2013.

Mr Sethi, the caretaker chief minister of Punjab, was spot on when he said that his one and only job was to facilitate elections, not make policy or launch projects. A clear statement like this is particularly important when it comes to the economy. In the very next instant, he diluted the statement by making promises to the poor. His heart is in the right place, but that is not the point. A caretaker set-up has neither the time nor the mandate to start anything new. Indeed, if Mr Sethi, who has kept the portfolio of finance with him, has had a chance to look into his vault, there is no money left after the spending spree in the month of March.

This should be his main worry. If he wants to end up as an honest caretaker rather than Pushkin’s undertaker, then his number one economic priority should be to ensure a zero overdraft with the State Bank of Pakistan. Data has not yet been made public for the month of March, but a sizeable overdraft may not be an unsafe guess. In the province, this overdraft is the equivalent of fiscal deficit at the national level. Its size shows the quality of fiscal management of a provincial government. Maintaining fiscal responsibility at the provincial level has assumed greater significance after the generous Seventh NFC Award and the devolution under the Eighteenth Amendment. The change, however, has not sunk into the provincial financial culture. In 2010-11 — the first year reflecting the full effect of the change — an unprepared Punjab spent Rs48 billion less than the total revenue. In the following year, it overspent to the tune of Rs9 billion. In the current year, total expenditure has been budgeted in excess of total receipts to the extent of Rs3 billion. The civil accounts up to February show that the provision for the development budget has been increased from Rs250 billion to Rs 261 billion. But beware The Ides of March. The expenditure may overshoot the revenue by miles.

What is to be done? Nothing can be done on the revenue side in such a short period. For years, the provincial revenues have been negligible and the incentive for further mobilisation has been weakened by the increase in the provincial share of the divisible pool of federal taxes to 57.5 per cent. Although Punjab’s relative share in the total provincial share at 51.74 per cent is less than before, due to the reduced weightage given to population in the new formula, the absolute increase in its share has been more than 100 per cent. However, given the state of play at the federal level, Punjab is unlikely to receive the budgeted amount of Rs650 billion in the current year. All the action, therefore, is on the expenditure side. Even here, the current budget is tougher to cut than the development budget. A smaller cabinet, laying off the fat of hangers-on and an austere style may go some distance, but only some. There will, however, be a lot of fat in the development budget.

Therefore, the following must be adhered to. First, no new scheme should be initiated and the chief minister should avoid the temptation of making announcements of packages or grants of any sort. Second, any scheme not approved in the budgeted annual development programme need not be funded. Third, schemes having utilised 80 per cent of the allocation should be provided their budgeted funding. All token allocations should be scrapped. In the projects requiring public-private partnership, the private should be emphasised more than the public. Finally, and as a rule, revenue for April and May should be forecast and the expenditure pitched accordingly.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 5^th, 2013.

Abdul Hafeez Sarwar Hashmi, my father, breathed his last on March 31, 2001. Declared the APNS cartoonist of the year 1982, he was only the second to win this award, after its institution a year earlier. His career did not start as a cartoonist, though. Drawing and calligraphy ran in the family. He had a natural flair for both. He never had any formal training. Born in Gojra in 1919, a small town of what was then the district of Lyallpur, he went to a school in Mehdi Mohalla, where Mumtaz Mufti taught English. The latter inspired my father into the world of literature. Literary sensibility added lustre to the ability to draw and compose letters beautifully. Indeed, he started writing poetry under the name of Hafeez Batalvi. He even tried his hand at writing a novel and a script for a film that was never completed. Mostly on demand and for competitions, he did a number of paintings in oil and water colour. One such painting won an award in an official competition to reflect the theme of One Unit. It showed traditionally dressed women from all provinces performing the Kili dance. I suspect that the first governor of West Pakistan, Mushtaq Ahmed Gurmani, asked him to design the official logo of the newly-formed province.

Choudhry Inayatullah, known for many innovations in Urdu journalism, was my father’s classmate. The two left their homes and went as far as Calcutta to produce a magazine for children, Bachchon ki Dunya. The venture turned out to be a non-starter, but the two were together until the launch of the daily Mashriq by Inayatullah, when my father decided to side with Nasim Hejazi and stay on for the venture Kohistan, which was also the creation of Inayatullah. Earlier, he and my father were together in the production of Hidayat, a children’s magazine published by the famous Qaumi Kutub Khana on Railway Road in Lahore. We lived on the top floor of the office, next to Arab Hotel, an intellectual talk shop of the day. I still remember the domineering Chiragh Hasan Hasrat and a thoughtful Bari Alig. Inayatullah moved to Rawalpindi when daily Tameer was brought out. My father stayed in Lahore, but was encouraged by him to send cartoons. This was the beginning of his career as a cartoonist. His last and longest stint as a cartoonist was with the Nawa-i-Waqt. It wasn’t a happy ending; until his death, he kept wondering why that institution was so unkind. After his exit from the newspaper, he did not draw a single line.

A specialty of my father was designing book covers. He had designed the covers of almost all novels by Nasim Hejazi. His popularity with women writers for designing covers was the envy of many. Besides others, AR Khatoon’s name comes to mind. This should not be surprising. When asked to adopt a shorter name for print media, he picked up Hafeez from his own name and Sarwar from his mother’s name to become Hafeez Sarwar, or HS for short. Shorish Kashmiri, Altaf Hasan Qureshi and Niaz Ahmad of Sang-e-Meel Publications would also approach him for art work. I think he was on the side of Mujib Shami when the latter fell out with Qureshi and created his own weekly, Badban. Interestingly, his entire career as a cartoonist/artist was along the side. Throughout, he was an employee of the Punjab government’s department dealing with agricultural information. Art alone can’t feed a family, he would say. He was very strict in keeping all of his seven children away from the world of art.

May his soul rest in peace.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 29^th, 2013.

As the republic days of Pakistan and Bangladesh approached every year, on March 23 and 25 respectively, I developed a wistful desire to visit the Czech Republic and Slovakia. It materialised this week.

Two decades ago, they were together as Czechoslovakia. In 1992, elections returned Vaclav Klaus and Vladimir Meciar as Czech and Slovak leaders. Negotiation began on various forms of devolution but eventually, the two decided to part ways. Neither the public, nor the president of the Czech Republic at the time, Vaclav Havel, were ready for it.

In July 1992, Slovakia declared independence. For the next six months, their respective elected leaders, Vaclav Klaus and Meciar, negotiated the terms of separation, which included the vexed subject of the division of assets, especially gold reserves. Troops were also moved. The first day of 1993 saw the peaceful emergence of the two states. There was no foreign intervention, no military operation, no public violence, no refugees, no charges of exploitation, no demand for public apology. It was instantly dubbed a “velvet divorce” following the 1989 “velvet revolution”, to mark the end of the Communist rule. “Velvet” denotes that both events were not violent. Under the Austro-Hungarian Empire, both shared a history of oppression. The end of that empire brought them into a voluntary union in 1918, despite cultural and economic differences.

Economically, the Czech part was better off with a 20 per cent higher GDP per capita. Some Czechs felt that they were subsidising the Slovaks and the latter would grumble about the former’s dominance. There is a feeling that the Czech enjoyed a greater share of the total pie. Interestingly, opinion polls in 1993 had found the majority opinion to be against the dissolution of Czechoslovakia. Now, no one really wants to undo the divorce. One noticed a certain feeling of nostalgia in the Czech Republic about the days spent together, but none in Slovakia shared this sentiment. The Czech Republic continues to prosper as a tourist attraction, the country of Franz Kafka, Milan Kundera and Vaclav Havel. Bratislava, the Slovak capital, on the other hand, does not have an international airport. One has to go through Vienna, Austria. Alexander Dubcek was a Slovak. Immediately after the divorce, the Slovak economy shrank by four per cent. However, growth since then accelerated so fast that it was called the Central European tiger. Even after the global financial crisis, it was able to keep away from the double-dip recession spread across Europe.

After the separation, the two leaders have had unceremonious exits. Klaus, the Czech leader, is being impeached for promoting crony capitalism. In Slovakia, a citizen’s movement got rid of Meciar in 1998 for his authoritarianism. The two enjoy good neighbourly relations, cooperating in infrastructure projects, as well as military fields. There were divided families in the beginning, but a later agreement on dual citizenship has solved that problem, too. Intermarriages continue.

As a BBC journalist put it: “If breaking up is hard to do, then the Czechs and Slovaks made it look a lot easier than that, 20 years ago.” Quebec, Catalonia and Scotland see it as a model. Alex Salmond, the Scottish first minister, believes that “once the popular will is determined, constitutional discussions can be concluded in good time”. Sitting in Bratislava, I kept wondering why the divorce in our case had to be so violent.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 22^nd, 2013.

Nawaz Sharif shares Bill Clinton’s adage — “It’s the economy, stupid”, but with a desi touch. In the just released manifesto of his party, as in his past tenures, the economy is priority number one. “Strong economy, strong Pakistan” is the theme song. This is due more to his business background than to any articulate economic thinking. Otherwise, this column would have been on “nooneconomics”, not “nooneconomy”. In his first tenure, he went all out for liberalisation, deregulation and privatisation. The word got around that there was money to be made in Pakistan. The second tenure demonstrated his will to undertake mega projects, despite strong intellectual, bureaucratic and political opposition. And the economy is also in focus in the new manifesto, flavoured though by populism to extend his support base. The minimum wage is to rise from Rs8,000 to Rs15,000. Eight hundred thousand jobs are to be created annually, in the public as well as the private sector. A national manpower plan will match the demand and supply of skills and labour. Infrastructure projects, especially in the top priority sector of energy, will be made labour intensive. Restructuring and revamping rather than outright privatisation are the buzzwords. The railway is described as a favoured mode of transportation for the common man. It will be managed effectively through an independent board. Similar measures will be taken for PIA. Providing housing for all will be a serious pursuit. Salaries and pensions will be protected and subsidies will be more targeted. In an oblique reference to the Benazir Income Support Programme, the manifesto commits to the continuation of cash transfers with greater transparency and a special focus on widows, orphans and female children. Expenditure on social protection will be taken to two per cent of GDP. Education gets four per cent of GDP and an emergency will be declared to achieve targets. A uniform system of education and the declaration of mother tongues as national languages have been promised. Health will claim two per cent of GDP and a national health insurance policy will be launched. Poverty and hunger will be addressed by making access to food a fundamental right. Land reform leads to revitalisation of corporate agriculture via land development corporations and with equity for poor farmers.

All this is to be achieved by raising the investment rate to 20 per cent from the present 12 per cent, and achieving GDP growth of six per cent. No new taxes will be levied and the number of existing taxes will be reduced. There will be no increase in the rates of existing taxes. If anything, these rates will be brought down. As if to reaffirm the populist stance, an exception has been made in the case of regulatory duty on the import of luxury items. Yet, the tax-to-GDP ratio is envisaged to rise from the present low of 9.9 per cent to as high as 15 per cent. With no new measures, this jump requires a GDP growth of at least 10 per cent. Assuming that the desired tax-to-GDP ratio is somehow achieved, the additional 5.1 percentage points will be exhausted by the proposed additions of 1.9, 1.3, 1.5 and (possibly) 0.4 percentage points to education, health, social protection and food security. To keep the fiscal deficit at the promised level of four per cent, infrastructure requirements will have to be financed by cutting expenditure drastically. It is proposed to cut down non-salary and non-pension current expenditure by one-third, forgetting that the untouchable debt servicing constitutes the largest item here.

The numbers don’t add up. They did not, even in the earlier tenures. Let fools contend for macroeconomic consistency. The PML-N will march forward under the Pakistan Business and Economic Council chaired by “Prime Minister” Nawaz Sharif.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 15^th, 2013.